Of Books And Music
by once-was-serendipity
Summary: Jess leaves for California to deal with past demons. Rory's determined not to care, he's determined to stay away, yet somehow, neither of them can really pull it off.
1. Prologue

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them . No copyright infringement intended.

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**01. Prologue**

It is late and it is long overdue, but the thought finally enters his mind and it is the first one in a long time that feels clear, true and untainted. At first, it freezes him still, then it slowly seeps into the tiniest part of his being and firmly takes hold, and he knows it's there forever. Panicked, he shrugs it off and decides to ignore it, but it is persistent and refuses to be pushed away. He tries a different approach and ridicules it; then it makes him angry. It is pointless anyway, so why bother? He tries to read, but the thought comes back, again and again, until he gives up and finds a pencil, underlines those few lines that provoked it and scribbles something next to them. He removes the postcard that marks the page, shoves the book into his back pocket, stands up and starts walking, as if to run away from it and leave it behind somewhere where it can't catch up with him. But it follows, like a shadow, and slowly takes over his mind and pushes out all the reasons why he should fight it. Disgusted with himself for being so weak, for not being able to stay away, for wanting something that is so far out of reach, he walks for some twenty blocks until he finds a place that is open. The woman at the counter is reserved and distant, and never even looks at him as she straightens out and counts the crumpled bills he slides under the glass. She hands him his change and returns to her magazine.

He leaves quietly and walks aimlessly, accompanied by the familiar feeling that is sadness, desperation, anger and a profound sense of loss all rolled into one. He realizes that he had lost this particular battle with himself, like he would probably lose any others like it that he would face in the future, because it is something he just can't fight, not by rationalizing, not by pride, not by escape, not by any means he possesses.

It's not as if he didn't try.


	2. Come As You Are

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them . No copyright infringement intended.

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_Mood music: Come As You Are, Nirvana_

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**02. Come As You Are**

The first book arrives after three months.

She comes home from school and collects it from the mailbox, along with at least a dozen catalogues, some addressed properly to her mother and others - somewhat less properly - to Squeegy Beckinheim. It is unceremoniously wrapped in brown paper, secured with two strips of scotch-tape and her name is printed on the front with block letters that seem vaguely familiar at first glance, but not familiar enough for her to give them a second thought. There is no return address, and the stamp is smudged so she can't decipher where it comes from. She examines the package curiously and tries to think if she had maybe ordered something online and forgot all about it. She lays the catalogues on the kitchen table and carries the package into her bedroom, dropping her backpack by the door and kicking her shoes off as she weighs the package in her hands.

Of course, she knows that it is a book; she also knows it is a paperback and she guesses the page count to be at around 500. Curious and expectant, she rips the paper and drops it on the floor and is not surprised to see that she is indeed holding a book, but she's somewhat shocked at the state that it is in – free of the brown paper, it becomes twisted; the cover is stained and ripped in the lower left corner, it is messy and pages are sticking out everywhere. In a weird way, it is disturbing to hold and look at, and for a moment she feels like she is peeping into a well lit room while standing hidden in the shadows outside a window, or rummaging through someone's dresser; she feels like she is experiencing something very intimate and personal and not intended to be seen. She never registers the title or the picture on the cover, she just instinctively opens it at random and flipps through several pages, not really knowing what she expects to find.

It only takes several flips and then she sees them – the notes in the margins. She instantly freezes and watches her knuckles turn white as she grips the pages so tightly that her wrists begin to hurt. Suddenly, the book seems to turn to flame between her fingers and she drops it, watching it fall to the floor in slow motion and hearing it land with a soft, unassuming thud.

She turns around and walks out of the room.

.........

The front door slams and Lorelei's voice rings out from the hallway.

"I know I'm late but I bring provisions, so you're not allowed to hold my lateness against me unless you're willing to watch me devour this wonderful, tasty, delightful pizza all by myself while you nibble on that last remaining pickle I spotted floating helplessly in its jar when I threw out last week's leftover Chinese from the fridge this morning…"

Rory puts her homework away and smiles, gets up from the sofa and walks to the kitchen. "You threw out leftover food before a whole new civilization developed in the boxes? Wow, I didn't know you had it in you!"

"Ha-ha, very funny – you should really hold back with the witty remarks until after your stomach is full."

"Sorry, my mistake. " Rorry picks up a piece of pizza and sits down. "So how come you're so late? It's after nine, all the good girls are home by now."

"Yes, well – some guests that were arriving today had car trouble on their way in and were late, Jackson delivered zucchinis instead of brussel-sprouts and Sookie consequently had a fit, Michel got a paper cut –big drama ensued, and there was a whole extravaganza involving a misplaced shipment of pillow mints… so I'm actually surprised I made such good time at all." Lorelei sits down and picks up a piece of pizza as well. "What did you do?"

"Nothing really, just got home, did some homework, sat here starving, did some research, starved some more…"

"Yes, yes, I'm sure it was a horrible experience – so horrible in fact that you were too weak to pick up the phone and order some food, or – perish the thought – walk down to Luke's and get pampered with various delicacies he would happily prepare for you - if for no other reason, then just to annoy me later with endless lectures about proper ways to feed a growing teenager."

"It's just I love you so much, I'd rather starve than put you in a position to be lectured by Luke."

"OK, enough with all the mushiness… I'm gonna go fill the tub, light some candles and put on some soothing music…"

"…oh God, not Nirvana again?!.."

"Shush, mommy's had a rough day, she needs to recuperate and Kurt Cobain helps that. Be supportive or at least understanding, otherwise I'll make you… wash dishes, do chores… and stuff, whatever it is that rebellious teenagers get disciplined with these days… Maybe there's some kind of manual on that online…" Lorelei jumps up from the table and kicks off her shoes, walking towards the stairs. "I could make you take out the trash, or clean my shoes, or tidy up your room… " She stops in mid step. "Rory, there is a book on the floor in your room." She looks at Rory. "Why is there a book in the middle of the floor in your room? I don't think I've ever seen that happen in your whole life, it's heresy, it's like seeing Luke drink coffee. "

"Oh… it's… Really, there's a book on the floor? I hadn't noticed… It must have fallen out of my backpack when I was getting my homework out." Rory hurriedly starts clearing the empty pizza box from the table. "I'll get it in a minute."

"In a minute? You aren't going to run straight over there, scoop it up, apologize and cuddle it for a while? Are you feeling ok?"

"Mom, come on, I'll get it in a minute. Go and find Kurt, light the candles and I hope you two have a very cosy evening together."

"OK fine, but I'm officially worried now…" Lorelei sighs and goes upstairs.

Rory throws out the pizza box and goes into her room. She quickly changes into her pajamas and sits down on the bed, cradling a pillow in front of her. For the first time since she dropped it on the floor, she looks at the book, from across the room, from a safe distance. It lays there, ripped and broken, silent, enigmatic and unyielding – so much like him. The moment the comparison forms in her mind, she closes her eyes and wishes it hadn't, determined not to go there and revisit that place in her memory where he lives. She lies back and pulls the covers over herself, suddenly feeling very cold and alone. She turns the light off and purposefully turns her back to the book. She decides to simply ignore it for now and deal with it tomorrow; she will just pick it up and stuff it somewhere where she won't have to ever see it again and she will only do it because Lorelei will ask a million questions if the book stays on the floor – for all Rory cares, the book could stay on the floor forever. For now, she will just ignore it and sleep.

_Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be  
__As a friend, as a friend, as an old enemy  
__Take your time, hurry up  
__The choice is yours, don't be late  
__Take a rest, as a friend  
__As an old memoria, mermoria…._

The music softly drifts through the house and finds her, and she is immediately annoyed with herself for hearing it, for not being able to block it out and as she registers the lyrics she hates herself even more for thinking how appropriate they seem for this moment. Stubbornly she shuts her eyes and thinks about the article she is writing for the Franklin, about what she will have for breakfast in the morning, about the new CD Lane asked her to pick up in Hartford – about anything, really, that will block out the song and the thoughts that came with it. She doesn't want to go there again, to that hurtful and tucked away part of her soul that she refuses to acknowledge even exists except in the moments when it rears its ugly head unexpectantly, always unwelcome and uncalled for, but brought on by various little things that remind her of what once was and now isn't - or at least wasn't, until this afternoon and the arrival of that seemingly simple package.

Oh, the package is anything but simple, Rory knows that. It announced that the moment has arrived, the moment she'd been avoiding for months, the one she dares not face because she is scared, so scared it will change her and scar her and make her feel things she felt before, when she realized he was gone and not coming back. It was very gradual, this sense of loss – it didn't really manifest until days after Lorelei told her he had left; at the time, it was just a mild mixture of conflicted feelings of anger and betrayal because he left without saying goodbye, sprinkled with regret and a soft sense of loss. It was in the days that followed that she felt herself changing, felt a growing distance from everything and everyone around her. It was like she had blindly and unknowingly stepped into abyss and didn't realize it until she felt herself falling and could find nothing solid to anchor herself to, nothing close or familiar or safe. She found herself missing him so completely that it became a constant, lingering pain, always present and unyielding and as days turned into weeks it became the bigger part of her, coloring everything she did, following wherever she went and occupying her every thought. She walked around town and he was everywhere; everywhere she looked memories would materialize in front of her and she would relive them all over again. It wounded her to remember, but at the same time it was a precious, sweet kind of pain because it allowed her to be with him again. She struggled with the impulse to name this inner chaos that took her over, scared that it would break her if she did, scared that it would grow, scared of finding out just how far this pain could reach and where it would take her if she allowed it to lead the way.

Reality hit hard and brutal one evening when she was driving home and a dark haired boy walked into the town square from a side street and she registered him out of the corner of her eye; in the short instant she believed it might be him, she suddenly realized she had been hoping so desperately to one day just see him on the street, or walk into Luke's and find him there, or answer the phone and hear his voice that her heart jumped so hard she swerved and hit a street lamp, smashing her head on the dashboard. The boy she saw came running and asked if she was OK - it wasn't him, and in that moment she knew it never again would be and she passed out. She woke up in a hospital bed hours later, with Lorelei asleep in a chair across the room. She struggled to remember what happened, and when she did, she cried for the first time since he'd left, she cried for hours in her mother's arms as she wordlessly said goodbye to him and pushed him away to a place inside her that she swore not to revisit or let herself feel again.

And she hadn't. Until today. Until the book.

It was still there, on the floor; of course it was, it is a book, where is it going to go? She gets up from the bed and curls into a chair across the room, watching it. She suddenly realizes she has no idea which book it is; she tries to see the title, but she can't make it out in the moonlight. It really doesn't matter, though – the book is him. She recognizes the presence, the familiar hold he always had over her, she remembers the burning she felt earlier when she held it – it is all him. She can feel him so distinctly as if he is standing right there and she can see him in her mind's eye more clearly than ever before, but she can't quite capture the expression on his face. Why do this? Why do this now, why send this piece of himself, this so very naked piece - because with him, that's what his books are – they show little parts of his soul in the margins, parts that are bare, honest, sincere, stripped of all the cynical, jaded and defensive little remarks he normally uses to build those thick walls he surrounds himself with.

For a moment, she considers the possibility that there might be a note or something inside it – she dismisses the thought as soon as it enters her mind, knowing instantly that's just not something he would do. It is just a book, it has its own story – his story would have to be read between the lines within. Is that why he sent it? Did he want her to read it? Did she want to? Suddenly it occurs to her that he probably had no expectations whatsoever when he sent it. For him, just the fact that it arrived would be enough – it is here, and it is up to her to either take it or leave it.

She doesn't know what she wants to do; she just knows the idea of holding it scares her, so she just stares at it, until she feels her throat tighten and her eyes begin to burn.

..........

_She gets off the bus at the same time she does every day and walks the same route towards Luke's. She wraps her sweater closer around herself and crosses her arms on her chest because it's windy today and she is slightly cold. She wonders if she'll see him there, smiling privately as she finally admits to herself that she likes to watch him move, although watching him sometimes brings about feelings that are unsettling and exciting at the same time, feelings she's not entirely sure what to do with. Halfway there, she's pulled into an alley and suddenly his face is right there in front of her, with eyes that sparkle and a half-smile that seems reserved for her alone._

"_Hey," he says as he leans lazily against the wall and pulls her closer to him. She smiles at him and places her hands on his chest._

"_Hi," she says and leans closer to him as he wraps his hands around her waist and pulls her closer still. "Are you stalking me? I just barely got off the bus." She's joking but she's a little nervous, feeling like he's caught her thinking about him and slightly worried he can tell what was going through her mind just seconds before._

_He laughs softly. "No, not stalking you. Well, not anymore, but I pretty much memorized your schedule from when I used to stalk you before… you know, when I wasn't allowed to do this…" He leans in and kisses her softly, and she thinks that it must be the gentlest touch she has ever experienced, but there's something very determined about it nonetheless. It is a very slow, light and tantalizing kiss, but she can feel something inside her begin to stir and demand more. She grabs onto his shirt and pushes into him slightly, wanting to be closer still; she feels him stiffen for a moment and feels his heart beating wildly under her hand as his grip on her waist tightens and his left hand travels up her back and into her hair, finally cradling her head and tilting it just enough for the kiss to deepen to the point where there's nothing gentle about it, there's just this very raw need to get closer and not to stop. She untangles her hands from his shirt and wraps them around his neck curling her fingers in the short hairs she finds there – this brings them closer still, and suddenly she can feel him all the way along her body and there's almost unbelievable pleasure in that; she thinks that she could stay entangled this way with him forever, when suddenly she feels him pulling away. She opens her eyes and finds him inches away from her face, smiling slightly, and she's suddenly embarrassed; she knows she's blushing so she quickly looks down and tries to step away from him but he doesn't let her. His hand is still in her hair and he pulls on it slightly to make her look at him again; then he leans in and whispers: "Maybe we should breathe a little" and kisses her gently on the cheek. He then throws his hand over her shoulder and walks her slowly out of the alley and she easily falls into step with him, feeling all is right with the world._

_.............._

"Rory! Rooooooryyyyy, are you up? Come on hon', get a move on, I need coffee and I can't find any!"

Rory jumps up so hard that she can't figure out where she is for a moment – everything seems backwards, like someone had moved all of her furniture around. It takes her a second to figure out she fell asleep in the chair and the world rights itself again; it takes her another second to realize Lorelei's coming down the stairs. Getting up, she spots the book still lying on the floor and lunges for it, quickly shoving it into her backpack as the door open and her mother walks in.

"Wow, what did _you_ do last night? You look like you took on an army of zombies single-handed… no available teen super-heroes to lend a hand?"

"Ha-ha, you're hilarious, I love it when you get a good night sleep, you reach a whole new level of witty in the morning."

"Yes, and imagine how wonderfully that will develop after I've had some coffee..Come on, get dressed, get your stuff and lets go!"

"What? No, forget it, I need a shower first, then I can get dressed, get stuff and go…" Rory pushes passed Lorelei and starts for the bathroom.

"What? Shower? Now? No, no, I can't wait that long, we don't have any coffee in the house and if I don't get some within the next few minutes, all the good-night-sleep-induced wittiness will be gone and then…"

"Fine, fine, you just go and I'll stop by on my way to the bus and grab a cup to go."

"But then who will I talk to if you're not there, but here, getting all clean? It's highly over-rated, this hygene stuff, by the way."

"You can talk to Luke."

"I don't want to talk to Luke, he's very mono-syllabic in the morning and I'm all witty today."

"Fine, then don't talk to Luke. Just sit alone and quietly contemplate the meaning of life."

"Hey, you're witty today too!... Fine, I'll go. I'll see you there later."

Rory enters Luke's half an hour later, somewhat in a rush because she'll miss the bus if she doesn't hurry. The usual assortment of town characters is there; she waves to her mother sitting at the table by the window and walks to the counter.

"Hey Rory, I got your coffee all ready to go," says Luke as he reaches for a paper cup behind him.

"Thanks Luke, you're the best", she smiles and takes the cup from him.

"No problem", he winks at her and leans closer. "Could you just do me a tiny favor? Could you take her with you?" He nods in Lorelei's direction. "She's just so funny this morning it's giving me a headache and the sun is barely up."

"Sure, no problem", Rory smiles and walks over to Lorelei's table."Come on, Happy, walk me to the bus."

They leave the diner and walk to the bus station.

"Hey, I completely forgot to tell you yesterday, Sookie and I are planning to go to this seminar for the weekend – we're supposed to leave after work, so looks like you'll be all alone for three whole days. Your loving grandparents are terrorizing Europe so there's no dinner tonight – you sure you can handle all this unexpected freedom?"

"Oh yeah, it will be great… although, of course, I will miss you terribly and count the hours until you're home."

"Liar. Call Lane, call Paris, have a wild girls night, make some prank calls…Ooh, make sure you call Taylor and freak him out with something… you know what, have Paris devise a plan for that one, she's the scariest person I know. Or, even better, forget the wild girls night, just have you secret boyfriend come over and you two can watch secret movies and secretly make out on the couch."

"Mom, there is no secret boyfriend, and as far as I know, no secret movies. Just go and have fun, don't worry about me – I'll be fine. I'll order Indian food." She kisses Lorelei as the bus pulls in and then turns around and climbs in. Lorelei watches her go; as the bus pulls away, she wishes there was a secret boyfriend, or at least that Rory would find a way to let the last one go.

...................

There are no extracurricular activities today, so Rory is back on the bus to Stars Hollow right after school. She finds a seat in the back and puts her backpack on the seat next to her, getting ready to pull out a book and read her way back home. She reaches inside her backpack and out it comes, like a slap in the face – she forgot all about stuffing it inside here in the morning commotion, but it is here now, in her hands, which promptly start to shake as she stares at the cover.

The title reads "Shadow of the wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón; the author is a new name to her. She's suddenly nervous, and struggling with a weird feeling that the book somehow wormed its way into her hands under false pretenses – she certainly didn't plan to or even want to have anything to do with it and yet somehow, there it was. The thought that he in some twisted way got the better of her again first annoys her, then makes her resentful and finally, angry – the whole thing is ridiculous anyway and not nearly as ominous on a sunny afternoon as it seemed in the middle of the night. It is a book, maybe even a good one, probably a good one because he has no tolerance for crappy literature. Suddenly, she wants to read it – or at least, wants to have a look, but she is still apprehensive about the notes that she knows are lurking inside. She is not confident enough that she will be able to dismiss them and not let them reach her in places where she is vulnerable, but she is also curious. A small smile escapes her as she thinks that he probably knew she would be, immediately followed by a painful understanding of how well he knows her. She finally decides to jus flip it open and pick a random passage, read it and decide where to go from there.

She runs her hand over the cover – it is rough and ruined, but it feels warm – and when she flips to a page, the passage immediately catches her eye because it's underlined, and she reads:

_"Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return."_

Scribbled neatly beside it: _It's the same with the first person you love._


	3. Down Memory Lane

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them J. No copyright infringement intended.

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_Mood music: You Do Something To Me, Paul Weller_

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**03. Down Memory Lane**

Through the dirty glass, he watches another city appear in the distance and like many times before, he has no idea which city it is. There had been so many bus rides like this one in the last months that he has long ago stopped caring where the next one would take him. They usually ended at the main bus terminal and he would climb down, get his bearings and slowly gravitate towards the docks, if there were any, or the railroad station – any place that housed terminals and warehouses and where there were always boxes and crates to be loaded or unloaded and short term jobs to be had. Money was usually good enough to provide hot meals at various diners and the next ticket to wherever. He usually found out where he was exactly only when he picked up a postcard.

Today it's no different, except that he somehow feels tired, and as his feet hit another pavement that feels just the same as so many others that have known his footsteps in the last months, he suddenly wishes to one day arrive to a place that could hold him for longer than a week. He walks to the news-stand and picks out a postcard.

It's early in the evening, the weather is clear and he's grateful for that; he slowly walks down a nameless street and after a few blocks finds another one in a long line of diners. He walks in and spots an empty booth in the corner. A tired waitress walks over and brings a coffee pot and a mug with the words _South Lake City Olympics 2002 _printed on it. He asks for a sandwich and stares out of the window for a while, looking but not really seeing anything, before he pulls a thick black notebook from his bag and places it on the table. He fishes out a pencil from the inner jacket pocket and flips the pages, looking for where he left off. He suddenly realizes the notebook is more than half full and somehow this surprises him, because it seems to him it was only yesterday when he stared at that first blank page and wondered if he would ever think of anything worth writing down. The moment feels so close, but also removed, like something out of another life – it is something from another life, he reminds himself sternly, and immediately tries to direct his thoughts away from the dangerous territory they are wandering into.

_The night is warm and the sound of crickets echoes over the water as he sits on the bridge and waits for her. It's Friday and she said she would meet him here after the dinner at her grandparents. They've only been dating for a few days and he's not sure how long these dinners usually last, but he decided to play it safe, be here by nine and wait for her to arrive. It's dark and he can't see well enough to read, so he's just been sitting here and staring at the at the water for the last hour, but somehow, he doesn't mind waiting for her – it is easy and strangely satisfying to just sit there. He hears her footsteps on the path and seconds later feels the wooden planks of the bridge softly vibrate as she approaches; he quickly stands up, and suddenly feels restless and unsure what to do with his hands so his shoves them deep into his pockets. Her silhouette slowly separates from the darkness around them and soon she's standing before him, but keeps a shy distance - she's not sure how to cross it casually and not like she has an agenda. She's not even sure if she has an agenda or not. He's not sure either – this is the most private meeting they have ever had and the first one in darkness._

"_Hi", she says quietly and gives him an unsure little smile, brushing hair away from her face. Her breathing is a little shallow, because she's been rushing, and he feels warmth spread inside him at the idea that she was in a hurry to get here. _

"_Hi", he says and sticks his hands deeper into the pockets. Thinking hard how to close that gap she left between them, he notices that she's fidgeting a little and playing with her purse; he hopes maybe she's thinking the same thing. If it was any other girl, he'd have ten moves ready but probably wouldn't need more than two to get her exactly where he wanted her, but this is Rory and the usual rules don't apply – the very idea of playing her like that makes him feel nauseated. He suddenly realizes that a long time has gone in silence, with him staring at her and her darting her eyes around at anything but him and strangely, this helps him rediscover his usual confidence and he lazily steps closer to her. He senses how she is suddenly standing still._

"_How was dinner?" he asks, their faces only inches apart now._

"_Oh…Fine." She swallows and for a moment looks at him, quickly lowering her eyes again. It's hard to come up with a matter-of-fact answer, even to such a mundane question, when he's standing so close. "Grandma has a new maid. She served the salad in a wrong bowl. Big drama."_

"_Poor Gretchen."_

_She giggles a little. "It's Trudie, actually."_

"_Same thing", he chuckles and wonders once again how he will ever fit, even slightly, into a world where there are wrong and right bowls for serving salads. She's looking at him now, her lips still curved in a smile but there is something slightly apprehensive in her posture, like she is trying to relax but can't quite seem to get there. The look she's giving him is quizzical, like she's asking him to somehow resolve this awkward little moment and suddenly he just knows how to do it. He moves his head slightly forward and to the side of her face; when his lips are a breath away from her ear, he whispers "I'm going to kiss you now". Her eyes are wide and she's frozen in her spot as she tries to process a chaos of reactions that his breath on her ear induced. _

_His lips briefly and lightly touch hers and he looks at her smugly. "So, that's the way I'm going to kiss you from now on when I see you. You know, when we run into each other on the street, or see each other at Luke's, or actually go on a date. I'm thinking, I'll say hi and then you'll say hi, or something to that effect; then comes the kiss and we go from there. I thought we should clear that up so hopefully we can get passed this weirdness we seem to have going here. Does that work for you?"_

_Her eyes light up and she's smiling now. "Yeah, I think I can live with that."_

"_OK, so we're good." He pulls his hands and a pack of cigarettes out of his pockets and fiddles with them for a moment, but then puts them back, deciding against smoking in this particular situation. _

"_So, what do you want to do? Do you want to go back to Luke's for some coffee? I know it's a bit late for us mere mortals, but you and your Mom seem to be able to drink it at any hour." He suggests this because he wants to give her a graceful exit from this alone-in-the-dark-for-the-first-time scenario if she's looking for one, but secretly, he hopes she'll choose to stay. The question takes her by surprise and she's a bit disappointed that he wants to leave because she doesn't really want to share him with anyone else._

"_No, no coffee, I'm all filled up for the day. I mean, if you want, we can go, but I like it here, I don't mind staying." She looks up at him and he wonders if his face betrays how happy she's made him with that sentence; for a moment, he worries that it does because she smiles widely. "Let's just sit, how's that?"_

_The words barely leave her mouth and she's already sitting down and pulling him down beside her. He hangs his feet off the bridge and watches as she sets her purse down beside her and then takes off her shoes, letting her bare feet dangle of the bridge next to his. It is a funny little gesture, taking her shoes off, and he leans back on his hands so he can see her better. She's facing forward so he gets the profile view and once again, he can't help but think how very beautiful she is, but in an unusual, subdued, subtle way. She's wearing a dress and a sweater, and her hair is pulled back in a pony tail; for a moment he watches it move as she swings her feet over the water and notices how the moonlight gives it a soft, restless shine._

"_You're staring", she says over her shoulder. He says nothing, so she turns around. "I can feel your eyes burning holes in the back of my head, and any minute now, my brain might fall out." _

_He chuckles softly at the comment. "I like staring at you."_

_She blushes slightly and faces the water again. There is a beat of silence and it hangs in the air for a moment. Then she turns and looks at him again and there is a challenge dancing in her eyes. "Why?"_

_There are so many answers to that question that he has to think about it for a while. He could just deliver a clever line and turn the whole thing into a joke – she would probably let him get away with it and would not insist on an actual answer. He could go for the cliché and dish out a compliment – he's not sure how that would go over because she's so intelligent and he's not sure if he could pull it off without it sounding hopelessly lame (and he doesn't do lame). He could be his usual smart-ass self and say something vague and ambiguous and let her interpret it as she wishes. Or, he could just answer the question honestly, in which case he would have to think some more about where to even begin, not to mention the risk of exposing more of himself than he might want her to see in the process. It is a serious decision to make, so he takes his time. He pulls out the cigarettes again and lights one this time, looking past her, out over the water, but he can sense that she is watching him as intently as she was when she first asked the question._

_The silence seems long to her, but she doesn't mind it – she knows he will speak when he's ready. She privately admires this quality in him, the fact that he will take his time to ponder something and won't be bothered by the world around him while he does it. She can see a frown of concentration forming in his forehead as he lights the cigarette and for the first time the word sexy enters her mind bluntly and not in a form of a vague, distant something she knows the meaning of, but can't really apply to anything. Immediately the same chaos of feelings that appeared before when he whispered in her ear returns with surprising force and for a moment, she loses herself and has to look away from him to compose herself again._

_He feels her eyes move away from him and there is a weird sense of loss, because he really does want her to see him as he feels he's seen her from the first time they met. He knows it's pretentious to think that he really knows her, or at least knows her better than she knows him, but he allows himself to think that he actually does simply because he is good at reading people, a skill he developed because it was almost a survival requirement at one point in his life, and it is this point that he worries will scare her. There are many layers to him, some of which are dark, few of which he himself doesn't like to get in touch with and many of which he doesn't want her to witness, not yet. He wants her to see him, but he wants to reveal himself gradually, and have time to explain the darker parts. _

"_You make me feel calm."_

_She nearly jumps out of her skin when she hears him speak, lost in her own emotional disarray. She looks at him and is somewhat surprised to see him looking directly at her. He's turned towards her, leaning back on one elbow with one leg bended at the knee, holding his cigarette, and there is a new look in his eyes, a very studious, constant and lingering look. She locks her eyes with his and listens intently._

"_Looking at you makes me feel calm, makes me feel happy in a way children feel happiness, I suppose – like something that is fact, a given, unchanging thing, something… unconditional. When I look at you, I'm perfectly content in the moment and everything else just disappears, like it does when I'm reading a book, or watching a movie or listening to a song that completely takes me over. I am perfectly detached from everything else and there is just the experience of seeing you at that point in time that exists. Everything else just becomes…obsolete, and only the moment is real."_

_There is a long, long silence that she knows she should break, but she can't make her mind form a sentence, and at the same time, she knows that no response she could come up with now, or after ten lifetimes of wording it, could ever do justice to what he just said. Curiously, she torn between several levels of understanding – she's captivated by the sheer beauty of the words themselves, in a way she would be even if they had no connection with her whatsoever, like if she had come across them in a book; she's mesmerized by the fact that he finds such peace in her and amazed at the sincerity with which he answered her question. She feels that this moment is perfect, and he is so perfect in it, that anything she does or says now will inevitably taint it and make it lesser. She's afraid to move, hardly dares to breathe and is eternally grateful that their eyes are still locked together as she hopes that maybe, somehow, she can communicate what she's feeling simply by looking at him - so she gives it everything she's got, summoning every emotion she's capable of into the look she's giving him and wordlessly prays that it's enough._

_The silence goes on forever and gets louder with every heartbeat; he watches the expressions on her face change. He recognizes a few – there's shock, there's surprise, there's shame, but there are others he can't name and hasn't seen before but they are familiar like something he knows in himself. Just as he starts to worry he's gone too far, such a perplexing shift happens in her eyes that he stops thinking and just experiences it and instinctively understands that it's not that she has nothing to say but that's she doesn't want to. For a long moment, there is complete surrender of her entire essence in her eyes and he takes it all in, drawing a mental picture that he knows he'll keep forever._

"_Rory…"_

_The sound echoes in her mind and it's like he's pushed an action button somewhere within her, and suddenly she can move again. She leans back until they are face to face, slowly traces a finger down his cheek to his lips and leaves it there, signaling him to be quiet. She moves her face closer until their foreheads are touching and stays like that for a moment, with her eyes closed._

"_Thank you for that", she breathes softly and lets her finger fall from his lips, but keeps their heads together._

_He's relieved to hear her say something and grateful for the phrasing because all at once she's letting him know that he's chosen the right words and that she understood them for what they were. He enjoys this closeness and the innocence in it, but feels that the atmosphere should be lightened somewhat._

_Their heads are still touching and her eyes are closed. "So… are we attempting a mind-melt now?" She bursts out laughing and he continues, "…because if that's your plan, I feel I should warn you, you may be disappointed when you discover just how empty my head is right now."_

"_Oh, you're back to normal then, are you? That's good to hear, I'd hate to find out that I was wrong about you and that there was actually some substance to you that you managed to sneak past me." She smiles at him and is grateful for the dynamics shift because much has passed between them tonight that she'll have a better grasp of after she's had the chance to step away from it all and examine it from a distance. _

"_I always knew you only want me for my body," he sighs dramatically and tosses his cigarette into the water. _

"_Oh, definitely", she nods with conviction, "It's the body I'm after."_

"_Yeah well, just so you know – I don't put out on the first date, and you should at least have the decency to take me out for dinner and a movie before you start groping at me."_

"_Hmmm…", she pretends to think on it and then rummages through her purse. "How far will a candy bar…" (she pulls a Snickers out of her purse) "…and a re-enactment of a scene from Casablanca get me?"_

"_That depends", he chuckles and snatches the Snickers from her. "Which scene? And you can't go for the kissing ones because that's cheating."_

"_Crap, that sucks – those are the only ones I could do justice to", she rolls her eyes and moves a little closer, her confidence growing as she sees the smirk on his face give way to anticipation. Suddenly feeling very bold, she moves her lips to his ear - remembering what it felt like when he did it to her and wondering if she can turn the tables now – and whispers "Are you really that hard to get?"_

_He's completely unprepared for this new side of her and he feels his whole body go on alert as her breath dances on his skin, soft and exquisite, and when her lips touch the side of his face they leave a hot, burning mark; he instantly tilts his head and finds them, soft and yielding and gentle, and as much as his whole body commands him to go faster and kiss harder, he gives it all he's got to control himself and let her set the intensity and the pace. Her hand comes up to his cheek and she cradles his face in her palm; the kiss is slow, soft and gentle and in it she tries to capture the entire experience of the evening and surrender all the emotions it awoke in her. Having regained some control of his hormones, he senses there's meaning in this kiss, senses that she's trying to convey something beyond just kissing and touching and suddenly he knows it's meant to reassure him, to let him know how much she appreciates when he lets her into his world and how much she wishes he will do it again._

_She breaks the kiss slowly, hoping she managed to get across at least a portion of what she was trying to show and gives him a sweet smile that makes his heart skip a beat. He smiles back and declares, "I'm such a whore; I haven't even opened the Snickers."_

A loud clank yanks him back to the present; the waitress has returned with his sandwich. Suddenly, he feels the walls closing in on him and needs to move, so he shoves the notebook back in his bag, grabs the sandwich and nearly runs out into the street. He hates these little moments of reflection that sneak up on him unexpectedly and throw him so far off balance that he always ends up physically trying to run away from them, which is ridiculous, not to mention impossible. He hates that she is still so very clear to him, after months of trying to push her away and just forget about it all. It doesn't work and it never will, he knows that, but he also thinks that there must be some way to just accept it, make it a part of himself in a way that won't make him want to run anymore – he just has to find it. And he has to find it fast, because he's lately noticed that he's growing tired of looking ahead, of having expectations that he can't come true, of going through the same motions over and over again – this is a feeling he knows, that he's been through before and he knows just how dangerous it can be if given space to grow. Then come the dark days and this time, there would be nowhere safe to run.

A few blocks down he finds a park he likes; he scouts it for a few minutes – it's reasonably well lit, there are no empty beer cans or liquor bottles lying around and no syringes to be seen anywhere. He then checks the pulse of the neighborhood around him, and decides it seems safe enough, so he picks a bench and drops his bag onto it. He retrieves the black notebook and a jacket from it, then lies down on the bench with the backpack under his head, throws the jacket over himself, opens the notebook and starts scribbling.


	4. Shadow Of The Wind

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them J. No copyright infringement intended.

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_Mood music: Foolish games, Jewel_

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**04. Shadow Of The Wind**

"_It's the same with the first person you love."_

She closes the book and stares out of the window. There are houses and people and trees and cars passing by but she doesn't see them. She immediately knows that opening this book was a mistake because her heart is suddenly full and the soft ache that lives there and that she's learned to ignore grows just a little bit more persistent. Curiously, she feels very calm and even welcomes its presence, like she would welcome an old friend that she's lost touch with for a while but never really forgot about.

She knows that she will read this book. She smiles to herself sadly and thinks how perfectly she's developed this ability to deny, to hide, to ignore, to escape and to push away everything inside herself that she didn't know how to deal with, all the thoughts and emotions that formed after he left. She remembers how much effort she put into placing them far out of her mind and even further from her heart, and yet, ironically, how she instantly knew, the moment she realized where the book had come from, that she would let them all come out again. She knows she will go home and spend this weekend that she has to herself reading the book and facing whatever feelings she finds inside and come Sunday, she will either defeat them forever or be defeated by them – and whatever the outcome, she'll accept it and find ways to piece herself together around it. She knows it may break her, this book and everything in it, but she decides that maybe it's time to get broken if there's a chance of finding truth in the fragments and strength in admitting it. She feels no fear anymore, just a soft resolve that is easy and natural and somehow seems long overdue. She's tired of playing hide-and-seek with herself and she's giving up now – there has to be closure, there has to be a point somewhere that, once reached, will let her be at peace with herself as a whole.

She gets off the bus and slowly walks to Lukes's, and for the first time, she deliberately looks for memories in the places she passes. In the square, every bench holds a conversation, a joke, a fight; the alleys off the square remember too many kisses to count and this route she's walking now, they've walked together a million times. It was months ago but seems so close to her now that she can almost feel his arm around her and hear his voice as he whispers in her ear, and there's suddenly such yearning to hear his voice again that it makes her skin bristle and her throat constrict. She stops for a moment and takes a breath before she fixes a smile on her face and walks into Lukes's.

She's alone and so she sits at the counter; in here, she doesn't allow her mind to wander because he's literally everywhere in this place and it would just be overwhelming to face him here. She looks around for Luke and finds him gathering plates at a table by the window; he looks up and winks at her, then walks back to the counter.

"Coffee?"

"Yes, please" she smiles.

He hands her a super-sized mug and fills it up. "Oh, hold on a sec, I'll be right back." He disappears in the back and returns with a huge box which he sets on the counter.

She's confused. "What's this?"

"It's food. Lorelei came in earlier and mentioned she'd be out of town for the weekend." She still looks confused, so he scratches his head and continues, "I mean, you still have to eat, right?"

She grins widely. "You put together a care package for me? Luke, that's so sweet."

"Yeah well, as I said – you still have to eat." He smiles back. "You know what, you don't have to lug this with you now, I'll just drop it off after I close up tonight, how's that?"

"That'd be great, thank you very much."

He starts clearing the plates he's brought with him and watches her settle her eyes on her mug. He can't help the feeling that there's something different about her today; it was there when she came in this morning too, but it's a change so subtle that he can't put his finger on it.

"So, any big plans for the solitary weekend?"

"What?" She looks startled for a moment but recovers quickly. "Oh no, just pretty much a lot of boring stuff," she lies but can't do it to his face so she looks at her coffee. "You know, homework, laundry, maybe a movie…" Her tone changes slightly. "Maybe a book…"

"Your mom would be really disappointed to hear that, you know that, right?"

She laughs. "Yeah, she would. Maybe I'll squeeze in some bikers or a keg party just to make her feel better."

"I'm sure she'd appreciate that."

Someone yells for him at one of the tables and he rolls his eyes; "I'll drop by with the box around ten", he says, then grabs a plate and walks away. She finishes her coffee and picks up her back-pack; just as she's about to leave, the specials board catches her eye and she suddenly freezes in mid-step as she recognizes the handwriting. It's been sitting here for months and somehow she's never noticed it, but now, the familiar lines of the letters seem to scream at her so loudly that they drown out every other sound in the room. She's so transfixed that she doesn't even notice Luke come back.

"Rory?" He looks at her and follows her gaze to the board before she finds the presence of mind to take her eyes off it and focus on his face; she can see his expression change and a soft look enters his eyes, a look of understanding that makes her feel like he can see past her face and right into her soul.

"I should have wiped that stupid thing, it's been on there forever and no one orders it anyway…" he mutters and looks for a rag. "I don't even know why I keep it in here. I'll get rid of it right now."

Her hand shoots out before she can stop it and she grabs his arm. "No." He looks at her studiously and she knows she needs to somehow downsize the gesture. "No, don't – it's just a board. It's part of the décor." She looks into his eyes and softly says, "I like it."

"Ok then." He studies her face for a moment and sees her smile is back, but it somehow doesn't quite reach her eyes. "The board stays as it is."

"OK, great. I'll see you tonight."

He watches her as she gathers her jacket and her bag and walks out of the diner, and worries as he recalls the expression on her face. He then looks at the board and thinks about his nephew again, the same way he looks at it and thinks about him first thing in the morning when he comes into the diner and last thing in the evening, before he locks the place up for the night.

...............

The house is quiet as and the sound of the doors closing only makes the silence louder. She takes off her shoes and hangs up her jacket; then she walks into her room and drops the backpack by the door. It's six in the afternoon and the shadows are growing longer, and she feels like pajamas and ice-cream, so she finds them in the mess that is her bed and tiptoes to the bathroom. She peels her uniform off and stuffs it in the washer, adding some random pieces of clothing to get a full load and starts the machine. She puts on her pajamas and decides she'll be cold, so she heads back to her room to find her Harvard sweatshirt. Halfway there, she changes her mind and goes upstairs to her mother's room where she digs up a thick black sweater she knows since she's been four and puts that on instead – immediately, she feels warm and safe, and she smiles as she thinks of her mom.

She then walks back down to the living room and thinks about putting on some music, but she can't decide what she feels like listening to and so she gives it up. The answering machine light is flashing so she checks the message and listens to her mom inform her that they'd arrived safely but the hotel they're staying at is horrible, that Sookies's already had a fight with the cook and that she'll call again in the morning. She smiles and heads for the fridge to check for ice-cream and is happy to find there are several flavors to choose from, but somehow the moment has passed and she doesn't want any right now. Standing there and looking at the closed door of the fridge, she realizes she's gone through all the motions and that the time has come to go and get started on the book. As soon as the thought comes into her head, she feels her resolve waver and her mind begins to present a million alternatives – homework, television, phone-calls, dish-washing, vacuuming… anything but the book, but she shakes them off and purposefully walks to her back-pack, afraid that if she postpones this any longer, she won't be able to do it at all. She takes the book, walks to the sofa and settles on it, then hugs Lorelei's sweater closer as she looks at the book in her lap. She studies it for a long moment, thinking how best to approach it in a Rory-like, organized and analytical way, but there's no order at all in the emotions that she's dealing with, just like there was never any order in anything that concerned him. That is what always scared her the most, that is what scares her now – the complete loss of control that always comes with him. One word, one smile, one touch, and all logic and reason would somehow just disintegrate and there would be just feelings, a world of feelings that were chaos and bliss rolled into one.

She opens the book and starts to read.  
"_I still remember the day my father first took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time. It was the early summer of 1945, and we walked through the streets of a Barcelona trapped beneath ashen skies as dawn poured over Rambla de Santa Monica in a wreath of liquid copper…" _

The pages turn one after another, and soon she is lost in what promises to be a wonderful story. The very first note of his that she comes across is the same one she's already seen, scribbled beside the passage that she first read when she opened the book on the bus:  
_"Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return."_

She whole-heartedly agrees with the quote; the feeling it describes is familiar and close to her heart. There is one particular book she always returns to that she read as a girl, a story she sometimes finds naïve and shallow now that she's older but that she loves nonetheless. She likes how this short passage has so perfectly captured the essence of that love. Somewhat unwillingly, she turns her eyes to the note scribbled neatly beside it: _It's the same with the first person you love._

She stares at the words for a long time but somehow doesn't really take them in; she understands the parallel he's made but as straight-forward as it seems at first glance, she senses there's much more hidden in that short sentence than what she can read into it right now. It's a curious feeling, like coming across a thought too complicated for her current level of knowledge yet still intriguing, so she leaves it be for now and makes a mental note to come back to it later.

She goes on with the story and is quickly swept up in an amazing world colored with mystery and love and obsession, lovingly laid open for her with immaculate phrasing and vivid imagery. It is easy to get lost in it and she happily does so; at first, his notes in the margins are like little needles that poke at her heart every few pages, but soon, as she starts to appreciate them in relation to the story and not herself, they add wonderful new volumes to the whole experience. Sometimes, they are in forms of questions and make her appreciate a new perspective; sometimes they are little comments, witty, somber, deep or casual; always, they relate to the story and nothing else and because of that, she can enjoy them. As the story progresses, she finds that his scribbles help her understand it on a much deeper level than she would if she read it without them. Suddenly, again, an immense sense of loss washes over her as she remembers the conversations and discussions about books and movies and life that they used to have, and the profound sense of being richer for having been a part of them. His reasoning was always down-to-earth and practical, his arguments usually flawless, his imagination unrestrained and vivid and his mind inquisitive and alert. He could talk about a book he's read for hours and often, regardless of whether he was critical or appreciative of it, he would express himself better than the author himself. He read a lot and would pick up anything; he usually finished even the books he later rated to be worthless. She always found this surprising because he was not nearly as generous or tolerant when it came to people and was usually too quick to judge them; she remembers how it always disturbed her that he had so little interest, so little need for people and how comfortable and confident he was in his solitude. Too comfortable… She knows it is this glorified image of himself, alone and indifferent, untouchable and self-sufficient, that finally took him away from her, from Luke, from Stars Hollow… they had started to care too much and it had changed him, a change that scared him and he ran. It was easier than having to return the sentiment, she thinks bitterly.

She's not sure at what point it happened, but suddenly she realizes that there are tears on her face and that she's staring into space. The book is on the floor, forgotten, and she's alone in the dark room, alone with these thoughts that have come alive and then given way to feelings that she's been fighting for what seems like forever, feelings that hurt so exquisitely and reach so deep that there is just no end to them. And as her body starts to shake, she wonders again if it will ever stop, if she will ever be able to think about him for longer than a stolen second and not arrive in this place where she is now, where she just breaks down and wants to be someone else.

Hours have passed and it's late, but she doesn't notice that at all – it's like the world outside her has disappeared and there's only this dark, dark place inside her that still exists. She hears the church-bell sound and counts eleven chimes, distant and removed, little reality checks that she resents, but they bring a subtle change into the atmosphere – the tears slowly stop, her eyes dry and begin to sting so she gets up to wash her face. She kicks her leg on the coffee table as she wanders around in the dark room, so she turns on the table lamp and starts for the kitchen. She barely makes two steps and nearly jumps out of her skin as the doorbell rings. Forgetting herself for a crucial moment, she walks to the door and pulls it open.

"Hey, it's your favorite meals-on-wheels service, sorry we're late but there were circumstances that couldn't be helped", says Luke as he steps inside and hauls the big box that smells of hamburgers into the kitchen. He sets it on the table and is already turning around and switching the kitchen light on as she scrambles to remove any traces of tears from her face with her sleeves. When he looks at her, his expression changes to panic so quickly that she knows that she's failed miserably.

"Rory, what's wrong?" He grabs her by the shoulders and studies her face intently. She attempts a smile but can't pull it off; she tries to speak but can't manage it so she just shakes her head and crosses her arms on her chest. They stand there for a long minute, and she summons every bit of strength she has left to think of something to say that will reassure him and make him go away.

"Is this about the specials board?"

The words sound so absurd as they come out that Luke can't believe he just said them out loud, but curiously, they make her lift up her eyes and look at him. She's not ready for this level of insight, for such precise recognition of her pain; she feels her throat close again and her eyes begin to sting and there's just no strength left in her to fight the tears. Luke's heart cringes – the look she gives him is one of such profound sorrow that it feels like it belongs on a face of a very old woman and not this young girl whose smile he's known for years.

"Rory…please, just talk to me." His tone is so gentle and fearful that she wipes her eyes and smiles a little.

"It's a little about…the specials board", she says quietly, "but mostly, it's about a book."

He's so relieved that she's said something that he doesn't register it properly and so he just repeats after her, "A book."

She nods her head and moves away from him, wiping her eyes with her sleeves, and sinks into one of the kitchen chairs. Feeling completely out of his depth but determined not to leave her like this, he follows suit and sits down opposite her.

"It arrived yesterday," she says to the table-top. "In the mail." Her voice quivers again and the last part of the sentence is just a whisper. "With notes inside." She looks up at him again and clears her throat. " In the margins."

An abrupt, familiar image appears in Luke's mind, an image of a dark-haired boy leaning against the counter in the diner, with pencil in hand, scribbling away in a book. Numerous others follow, of countless situations, in which he noticed the same thing and she can see he understands what she's saying. She looks back to the table. He's not saying anything and she's grateful for that; she knows she doesn't have to say anything either, but somehow she wants to, although she's not sure if it's for his sake or her own.

"It's just hard," she breathes and her voice is a little less shaky. She clears her throat again. "It's just hard to think about him."

He nods. "I know." A beat of silence follows. "It's hard for me too."

Her eyes shoot up and she feels genuine surprise, immediately followed by shame for not realizing sooner that Luke has lost him too, and she suddenly feels closer to him because of it than she has felt to anyone else lately. Her heart suddenly jumps as a tiny new possibility enters her mind.

"Have you heard …" She starts the question timidly, but he immediately shakes his head. "No, not a word since he left." He looks up at her softly. "Sorry."

She just nods and looks at the table again and there's another stretch of silence.

"I just think it would be easier if I knew why he left", she says after a while, in an even tone that reveals that she's asked herself this question a million times before.

A sudden feeling of guilt hits Luke hard; she looks so small and miserable in that chair and it's all Luke's doing. It was Luke that sent him away and now she's hurting because of it.

"Rory…" He takes a deep breath and looks at her. "He left because I…well, I told him he had to go." She lifts her eyes and frowns. "He failed school, he lost a year, he said he wasn't going back, we had a fight and I said that if he wasn't going to return to school, he'd have to go." He shrugs. "And he did." Shaking his head, he adds quietly. " I should have known he would."

She thinks about this for a while but then she shakes her head and smiles sadly. "That's not why he left, Luke. That fight just gave him a convenient moment to do it in." The look in his eyes tells her that he doesn't believe her. "Think about it – even if you kicked him out, he still could have stayed. He had a job, he could find a place to live and if he decided not to go back to school, who could make him?" She shakes her head again. "Trust me, that's not why he left – he left because he wanted to."

Luke ponders this for a moment and allows that she might be right; after all, she understood him better than anyone. She might have been the only one who actually knew him at all.

She's quiet for a long time again, but there's composure and purpose in her silence. Her eyes are dry and her voice was strong and clear although quiet when she spoke, and he hopes she's feeling better. Relieved, he takes a moment and marvels how he never noticed how upset she was – how upset she still is – over Jess leaving and wonders if Lorelei knows there's so much sadness there.

"I thought he cared", she suddenly whispers. "I thought he cared more."

He's so surprised to hear her say that that he replies without thinking. "He did. I'm sure he still does." It is such an obvious truth to him that he's amazed that she's so clueless. "If he doesn't, then why send this book you mentioned?"

She looks away from the table and meets his eyes as soon as he mentions the book, and she does it because he's voiced something that's been lurking in the back of her own mind but also, she suddenly doesn't want to talk about this anymore because she's not really ready to admit even to herself that she hopes he's right, let alone betray it to him. Luke sees the change come over her face and for a moment she looks ashamed; he knows immediately it's time to move on to something else so he looks away from her and starts opening the box he brought with him. He pulls out a cheeseburger and sets it in front of her.

"You should eat. It's a couple of hours old, but knowing how long food usually sits in the fridge here, it's still a gastronomical delight."

She cracks a smile and takes it from him, unwrapping it quickly, and takes a huge bite. "Are there fries?"

He grins and relaxes for the first time since he flipped the kitchen light on.

............

Luke stays the night; after they had eaten and bad-mouthed Taylor for a while, she starts to yawn, and he just clears the table, walks into the living room and settles on the sofa. He never says that he's staying – he just takes off his shoes and turns on the TV. She goes along with it wordlessly; after she brushes her teeth and washes her face, she comes back into the living room to collect the book and he is already asleep. She watches him for a moment and smiles; she somehow feels safer because he is there.

She crawls into her bed with the book, but turns the light off and hopes to sleep. Some time goes by in tossing and turning before she realizes that although she's tired and emotionally drained, she is wide awake and sleep is unlikely. She flips the light back on and shuffles the pages until she finds the one where she left off and goes back to the story. The next comment he wrote down is funny and she laughs; the phrasing is so familiar that she can almost hear him say it and see the expression on his face as he does. It somehow seems that finally talking to someone about him has made him materialize in her head so clearly that every attempt to push him out is a lost cause and his presence is so strong that she wouldn't be surprised to look up and find that he's sitting at the foot of her bed. He's not – and right then, for the first time, she wonders where he is. She looks out of the window and into the sky, and although she knows it's corny and lame, she wonders for a moment if stars are as clear tonight in his sky as well. She wonders if he ever looks at them and thinks about her. She wonders if he ever regrets leaving and then she wonders if he'll ever come back. Does she even want him to? She has no answer to this question, not really – she can only get as far as wishing he'd never left to begin with.

She goes back to the story and the notes, and the hours fly by; as the pages turn, he slowly settles in her mind, settles comfortably and easily, like he's been there all along, like she's never evicted him as furiously as she did. Just as this story she's reading unfolds, the memories unfold as well – the good, the bad, the forgotten – and there is a precise moment in which she feels the damn break and the walls that separate the past from the present in her heart come crumbling down and suddenly, inexplicably, she feels whole again, like she's found that lost piece of herself that she's been missing but didn't dare look for.

As the dawn breaks and first traces of sunlight spill into the room, she finishes the book with a smile; just before she drifts off to sleep, she remembers the quote from the first chapter and the note next to it. She doesn't have to look for it; it is forever imprinted in her mind: _"Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return."_

_It's the same with the first person you love, _he'd written next to it; suddenly she understands the meaning behind it that escaped her before, and finally all these feelings she has for him are given a name, a name that's frightening and glorious at the same time. For the first time, in that one moment between dreams and reality, she knows this presence of him within her, it is forever. It will always be there, unchanged, and she will always return to it, just like she always returns to that old book she read such a long time ago.


	5. Lost In The Flow

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them . No copyright infringement intended.

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_Mood music: Strange transmissions, Peter Mallick Group feat. Norah Jones_

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**05. Lost In The Flow**

Dawn finds him in a diner, sleep deprived and agitated; the bus broke down in the middle of the night on the outskirts of town, so he had to walk for two miles before he found a place that was warm and served coffee. He's been sitting here long enough to finish another book and he wonders if there's a bookstore around because he needs to get another one if he wants to keep his sanity. He pays for the coffee and takes to the streets.

The town is small and he thinks he remembers walking past a board that said _Welcome to Rock Springs_ at some point in the night. The main square is easy enough to find, and he thinks this is where the bookstore would be if one exists. It's too early for people still and the streets are deserted; he feels like there's no one left in the whole world but him, roaming these empty spaces like a ghost, but then, the ghostly feeling has nothing to do with the absence of people – he feels like that even when he's surrounded by them, sometimes even more so.

Just as he is about to give up, he finds it, in a street off the square – the sign says it opens at nine, so there is still time to kill before he can find a new distraction. He makes a few more turns and ends up at the square again, finds a bench and sits down. He grabs his notebook and a pencil, but he just stares at the page and can't form a sentence, his thoughts too chaotic to capture, so he just sits and watches the town come to life. The process is painfully familiar and reminds him of mornings in another small town; a sad little smile escapes him and his heart clenches as a brown haired girl walks past, holding a coffee.

What is he doing? What is he doing here, on this bench, in this town? How many more are there before he's done? After months of running, he now knows that he can't run away from her and no matter how much distance he puts between them, she just remains as clear to him and as present in his mind like it was only yesterday he'd last seen her smile, heard her voice, felt her touch…

_It's early in the morning and he's sitting at the bus stop; he knows she takes this bus to school._ _He should be in school right now, but he shows up so rarely lately that he doubts anyone will even notice he's not there. She turns a corner and her face lights up as she quickly walks to the bench._

"_Hey", she says and sits next to him, giving him smile followed by a soft kiss. "What are you doing here?"_

"_Nothing, just enjoying the scenery. You know, small town waking up from its slumber and its perfect residents, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, happily greeting the wonderful new day…" He smirks, then plays with a strand of her hair and looks at her gently. "I thought you might like some company for the bus ride."_

_She frowns. "Shouldn't you be in school?"_

"_Maybe. Probably." He can see in her face that she disapproves. "You know it's not really my thing." She still doesn't say anything and his voice is a little harder with the next sentence. "I'm a big boy, Rory. Can you just let it go?"_

_The tone surprises her, but she knows how stubborn he can be and doesn't want to argue over this now; there will be better moment for that battle, so she gives him a small smile. "Sure."_

_The bus arrives and they settle in the back; its empty except for the two of them and two old ladies sitting behind the driver. He leans against the window and places his feet on the chairs with a mischievous grin and a challenge in his eyes, daring her to do the same. She hesitates at first and casts a fearful glance towards the driver, but soon enough, she follows suit and now they're facing each other with their legs entangled on the row of seats._

"_So, did you finish the book?"_

_He chuckles and shakes his head. "Nope, not yet."_

_She rolls her eyes. "Wow, you're really taking your time with this one. What is it, an encyclopedia?"_

"_And you're totally obsessing over me finishing it, it's borderline psychotic." He laughs softly at the annoyance in her face. "Why do you care so much, anyway?"_

"_I don't." A defensive look crosses her face but she gives it up. "I wouldn't care at all if you'd just tell me what you're reading."_

"_Oh, but it's so much more fun this way," he smirks and she crosses her arms and glares at him. "It's killing you that you don't know, and it's such a ridiculous thing. I'd probably have told you long ago if you didn't get so riled up over not knowing. It's just too cute, I can't pass that up."_

_She wants to be mad but can't quite pull it off, and a half-smile escapes under the frown she's giving him. "You're obnoxious, you know that?"_

_He nods. "Yeah, I know", he smiles, "I really don't know why you put up with me, unless…" There's a subtle change in his tone as he slowly moves his foot along her leg "… there are some other… qualities in me that you find...redeeming?" She knows this sparkle that's entered his eyes; immediately, there are a million pins and needles poking all along her body and she blushes. Determined not to let him notice that he's made her squirm, she looks straight at him._

"_Those qualities, as redeeming as they may be, are too far away to factor in right now," she says and smiles back sweetly._

_He's laughing now and she can see he's biting back whatever it was that crossed his mind, so she just looks out of the window and jots down a small victory. It's a bright sunny day that calls for long walks and picnics. He follows her gaze and apparently, reads her mind as well._

"_Hey, here's a crazy idea…", he whispers conspirationally. "How about you skip school and we find a park somewhere and just lay on the grass all day?"_

_She looks at him and thinks he'll probably never know just how tempting this suggestion is and how close she is to saying yes. He's looking at her and the challenge is there again, dancing in his eyes, as he leans against the window carelessly, with his legs stretched casually over the seats. She envies him for this capability to always be so relaxed and in sync with his surroundings, so at ease and nonchalant; she also sometimes envies this devil-may-care philosophy he lives by that grants him such freedom but it also scares her more than anything else in him, because she knows that it ultimately comes from not really caring about anything._

"_I don't skip school," she says and looks away. He knew she wouldn't and he smiles, but he also catches a hint of insecurity in her eyes and knows she actually wants to go. He doesn't push it – he knows it's not worth it because she would ultimately regret it if she skipped, but the whole situation provides an opening for a question he's been wanting to ask for a long time._

"_I know you don't," he smiles, but gives her a quizzical look. "Not in general. But you did it at least once before."_

_She remembers. "Only once," she says to the window. She takes her feet off the chairs and faces forward. He does the same, then scoots closer to her and takes her hand, playing with her fingers. _

"_I've been thinking about that and I can't figure it out." He turns her hand over and traces the lines on her palm. "Why did you do it? I mean, you came all the way to New York. You barely knew me, I was a pain the whole time you did, aside from one civilized evening we spent together in which I managed to crash your car." He looks at her. "I can't figure it out."_

_She laughs softly. "Look who's curious now? Even obsessive, maybe?" She looks at him playfully but quickly turns serious when she recognizes genuine interest in his eyes. She faces forward again. "I don't really know why I came. You just left and there was this whole public lynching-type drama around town in which I was perceived as this poor helpless girl and you were the villain of all villains and it made me sick, it felt wrong. I went to school that morning and somehow, I just never went through the door, but ended up on that bus instead." She looks at him again. "I really can't explain it. I didn't plan it. I just wanted to see you. The moment came and I just .. went along with it."_

_He smiles and whispers in her ear. "And then?"_

"_Then, I think, we had our first date, right there in New York. There was magic and fireworks, and a million romantic love songs playing in my head. I came back home and nothing was ever the same again." She laughs and whispers back. "How was it for you?"_

_He chuckles. "Pretty much the same, plus the somewhat disturbing and entirely unfamilliar new experience of someone coming after me after I'd left." He pauses. "That was a first." _

_She looks at him, and finds there's something more hiding under the trademark smirk. She suddenly realizes that her trip to New York, as spontaneous and inexplicable as it was to her, may have carried a much greater significance for him, a genuine display of affection that surprised him and even shocked him. If it did, he never let it show – but that was typical of him, he was very good at hiding his feelings and very careful not to show them._

_The bus stops and the doors open. She tears her eyes away from him and looks around. "Well, that's me." She gets up and grabs her back-pack. "Are you coming?"_

_He shakes his head and stretches on the seats again. "No, I think I'll just stay here and see where the day takes me." He winks at her. "I might be back here at four."_

_She smiles, then leans down and kisses him; it is a full, deep, fantastic kiss that throws him completely off center and in a split second, makes every nerve in his body hungry and alert. She withdraws slowly and whispers, "Just so you know, if you're not here at four, that's fine – I'll always be able to find you."_

_His lips still tingling, he watches her get off the bus and as it starts moving, his eyes follow her down the street._

He runs his hand over his lips absent-mindedly as another bus in another town drives past him. He shakes his head in defeat, stretches his feet in front of him and rubs his face; he's so sick of himself that he wants to scream. He can't keep doing this, it's insane, and he'd give anything in the world not to have had let it happen in the first place or at least not to have had screwed it up so badly when it did. Now, it's just turned into a vicious circle of regrets and what-ifs, of desperation and anger, and what is worst of all, hope – the tiny hope that is split down the middle, that conflicting feeling that tugs him in two opposite directions. There was an easier side to it, the one that hoped it would all go away if given enough time, that it would fade and diminish into a distant recollection that would be painful but bearable, always present but distant. But time has passed, a lot of time, and the feelings never changed – she always found him, and she never even had to come after him to do it. Maybe it was time to consider the other direction, the much more frightening one, the one that would call for more courage than anything else that he's ever done – the one that would take him back to her and make him face her again. The very idea is like a heat wave that hits so hard that he springs from the bench and starts walking blindly.

_It's four o'clock and he's back, and slightly annoyed with himself for it. It would probably be much cooler if he stayed away, and he tried to make himself go back home earlier, but it just didn't work. Finnaly, a couple of hours ago he just admitted to himself plainly that he'd rather be un-cool and spend some time with her, than be cool and alone. It was a slightly disturbing discovery, but he braved it somehow, and now it's four o'clock and he's not worried about anything anymore, just happy and squirming on the inside, but hopefully, hiding it well. It's ridiculous._

_He leans against the building across the street and watches all the preppy kids spill out of the school. The crowd disperses in a few minutes, and just as his heart clenches with the thought he might have missed her somehow, he spots her walking out of the gate. She stops and looks around, and he smiles as he watches her look for him. She doesn't see him so she walks to the bus stop and sits on the bench. She takes a book out of her bag and starts to read._

_He makes a wide circle and comes up behind her silently; he leans in and blows into her ear._

_She doesn't flinch; she just smiles. "I knew you were here." _

_He looks confused but gets over it quickly and grins. "So, you watched me watch you and pretended you didn't see me? Sneaky…"_

_She laughs. "No, I didn't see you. I just knew you were here." She looks up at him. "But I didn't know you made a habit of watching me. That's good to know. I have my very own stalker!"_

_He lets it slide and sits next to her; for a minute there's just eyes and smiles._

"_Hi," she says and slides closer to him._

"_Hi," he says and kisses her._

"_So…I called my mom and told her I'd be home late today." She smiles sweetly. "Did you discover any good parks around here?"_

"_Yeah, I devoted my whole day to it. Found a good coffee place too, and – they serve cake."_

"_Wow, you've been busy." She gets up from the bench and puts the book back into her bag. "So, where to?"_

"_Well, I'd suggest the park first; the coffee place is overrun with old ladies at the moment; apparently, there's actually a knitting convention in town and they're all hype about it now, but I suspect they'll be in bed by six."_

_She laughs. "Scary."_

_They walk down a few streets, turn a couple of corners and find themselves in a residential area. There's an elementary school in the middle of it, and a huge park with a lake to the side. They walk to the water and she looks around._

"_No bridges?", she asks._

"_No, none that I've seen." He pauses and adds softly, "I didn't know you liked them as much as I did."_

_She blushes and sits down in the grass. He sits next to her and digs through his backpack; he pulls out a book and hands it to her. "Here, I finished it. Your turn."_

_She smiles and quickly looks at the cover. "Memoirs of a geisha?" She stares at him. "Wow, you're full of surprises." She stares at the book again. "I can't make any sense of this. I swear, if you'd handed me Danielle Steel, I think I'd be in less of a shock."_

_He laughs. "What's with the third degree? It's a book. Someone left it at the diner, so I picked it up."_

_She shakes her head. "I know, but still… it's a weird choice."_

"_It's a random choice." He chuckles. "All random choices are weird in some way." He points at the book. "It's actually not bad, you should read it. All the romance mushiness aside, the world it describes is pretty awesome."_

_She looks at him doubtfully, but thinks about it. "Ok, I'll give it a go." She lays back and holds the book open above her face. He looks at her a minute, then leans over and takes the book away._

"_Not right now," he says softly and lays it down next to her._

_She looks up at him and watches his eyes roam over her face. The look is so intense like he's making a mental picture, and in a way, he is – he stretches her hair around her face in the grass and thinks how beautiful she is and how utterly incredible it is that she's here. He traces her eyebrows with his fingers, continues down her cheek and runs them gently over her lips, amazed how soft they are. She closes her eyes and he kisses her lightly, cradling her face in his hand. The kiss is so gentle at first that it feels like a soft breeze over her lips, but as exquisite as it is, it is somehow too evasive and distant, so she lifts up her hand and tangles it in his hair, pulling him closer. She parts her lips and the kiss develops; slowly taking on a life of its own, it quickly builds in intensity and fierceness and spreads through her to the point where she forgets herself and instincts take over. Her body moves on it own - she turns on her side, her arm wraps around him and she pulls him closer. _

_As their bodies come together, his mind goes blank and there's nothing but this perfect feeling of her so close to him, and the chaos of emotions it creates. He closes his hands around her and the kiss grows again, but there's also an urgency in his hands, an urgency to move and explore in places that are still untouched. He knows it's too soon and knows he should stop this before it gets out of control, but then she moves, trying to get closer still, and pushes into him; like an electric jolt has just been sent through him, he feels his whole body go rigid and all conscious thought is swiped from his mind. He flips her on her back and lands on top of her, and for a split second, feels like he's in heaven, but as he feels her hands come around his waist and pull him closer again, he panics at his loss of control and breaks the kiss, tangling his hands in her hair and keeping her head still as she tries to lift it and reach his lips again._

_Her eyes open and it's a look he's never seen before; there's the same hunger there that burns in him as well. Her breathing is shallow and she's flushed, and for a moment he just stares at her and thinks that he's never seen something so extraordinary in his life. The moment goes on and suddenly she squirms a little and it's a new kind of torture, one he can't handle right now, and can't let continue because it leads to things that they are not yet ready for._

"_Shhhh," he murmurs gently and strokes her face. "Stop moving."_

_She looks confused and hurt; he kisses her gently and whispers into her ear. "Please, stop moving like that, or I'll jump out of my skin." He looks at her and she's blushing, but there's also a smug little smile on her face. He grins back at her and rolls on his side, reaching for the book on the grass beside them._

His head clears and he finds himself standing in front of a post office. He stares at it for a minute, frozen, and as feeling slowly returns into his arms and legs, he just curses under his breath and walks inside, defeated. He finds the book in his back-pack, takes a pencil and turns the first page. He stares at it for a long time and gets ready to write, but always recoils just a moment before the pencil touches the paper. He finally gives up, sticks the book inside an envelope and scribbles the address on it.

As he walks to the counter, he suddenly feels old, much older than the man behind it, wrinkled and grey, whose hand shakes as he takes the envelope from him.


	6. Castles In The Air

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them . No copyright infringement intended.

_sisterdear: Thank you for pointing out I have been miss-spelling Lorelai's name, I have no idea how that happened!_

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_Mood music: Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell_

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**06. Castles In The Air**

Weeks go by and she slowly gets used to the new person she sees in the mirror every morning. On the outside, the difference is subtle and only appears occasionally, when her mind wanders. On the inside, there's a whole new dimension of understanding and acceptance as she lets the thoughts of him come and go as they please and slowly learns to balance between the joy and the pain that always come together when she thinks about him. It doesn't get any easier to think about him and to remember; it only gets easier to process the thoughts and the emotions that come with it, because she doesn't fight them anymore.

The book is on the shelf and it's been there ever since she closed it a few days ago, and she doesn't return to it. She doesn't need to, everything that's in it is now inside her as well.

It is Saturday and she's walking to Luke's to meet Lorelai for lunch; in the afternoon, the big project of repainting the kitchen is scheduled to start. As of yesterday, there are to be five different colors applied to the walls and although Rory still thinks it's way too much, it was a small victory to talk Lorelai down from the original twelve.

"Hi," she says as she sits at the table.

"Hi," says Lorelai. "You're late so I already ate – did I just rhyme? Anyway, I ordered you a cheeseburger and fries, extra large. I think we'll need the energy."

"So you ordered only one? That'll just get me to opening the paint cans and I'll be hungry again."

"Oh no, I'm way ahead of you; this one is to eat here; I'm getting a whole box load to go for after we've opened the paint cans."

"Ok, good thinking." Rory glances at the paint samples spread all over the table, and counts ten; the good news is that they're all different hues of green. She points at them. "So I'm guessing you've abandoned the rainbow room concept and moved on to a million shades of green? Any one in particular that you like best?"

"Any _one_ in particular? Oh no, we're doing them all. I'm thinking a gradual seeping from light to darkness."

Rory gives her an exasperated look. "Mom, we don't know how to do seeping."

"So? It's just a starting point. It's the not knowing how it will end up that makes it fun."

Luke arrives with the cheeseburger and sets it on the table. He then pulls a thick ledger from under his arm and hands it to Lorelai.

"You left this in here yesterday. I swear, if I had a nickel for every time you left stuff behind, I'd be the richest man on Earth."

Lorelai laughs as she reaches for it. "You'd hate being rich; there would be nothing left for you to grumble about. Oh, that reminds me…," she digs through her purse and pulls out a package, sliding it over to Rory. "This came for you in the mail this morning."

As she hands the package to Rory, Lorelai feels the atmosphere around the table change so abruptly that she looks around the diner, half expecting to find that count Dracula has walked through the door. When she can find no apparent cause, she looks back to Luke first and the expression on his face startles her; it turns to raw fear when she follows his gaze to Rory.

She's sitting very still and her eyes are locked on the package, but she makes no attempt to take it. She's so pale that a chill runs through Lorelai as she watches the color drain completely from her daughter's face. After a very long minute, Rory reaches for the package and shoves it in her bag without a word. Lorelai looks back to Luke; he's still looking at Rory, and it is a worried, understanding look that makes her realize she's missing something here, and she catches his eye as he turns to walk away. He just shakes his head and returns to the counter.

"So, we're going green then?", comes Rory's voice and Lorelai looks back at her, only this time it is a searching look; it is pointed and analytical and she examines her daughter's face carefully and recognizes a shadow there, one that she's first caught a glimpse of a while ago and watched settle there in the last few weeks. She decides it's time for a conversation, but knows it's not the time or the place. She smiles and returns to the paint samples.

"Yeah, we're going green. I'm thinking we start with…" she pulls a sample from the pile "…Deep Olive and work our way to Sunny Meadow."

"Sure, why not?" Rory nods and attacks her cheeseburger.

"Ok, so you eat and figure out the steps between Deep Olive and Sunny Meadow, and I'm going to go see about the stuff I had Luke pack to go."

She walks over and leans on the counter, watching Luke wipe some glasses dry. "You want tell me what just happened over there?"

He looks at her and then he looks at Rory for a long moment. He sets the glass down. "It's Jess", he says.

"Jess?" She digests this for a moment, then looks around quickly. "Jess is back?"

He shakes his head. "No, but as far as she's concerned, I don't think he ever left."

Lorelai thinks about this for a while; slowly the dots connect and the bigger picture forms in her mind. Suddenly, it all fits together perfectly and she can make sense of all the subtle little changes she noticed in the last months but couldn't quite put her finger on.

"Thanks, Luke" she says quietly and smiles, grabbing the take-out bag he put on the counter for her before she returns to the table. Rory's plate is empty and she's arranging the paint samples.

"So, have you figured out how we'll do this?"

"God, no", Rory laughs and pushes the pile towards her. "It's your brain-child, you figure it out. I'll just paint where you point."

"Ok fine, be that way." Lorelai shoves the samples in her purse. "We should get going; I've got the cans and the brushes and various other painting-related things in the car, and I'm feeling very creative. Grab your stuff and move it, I don't want to miss this opportune moment."

............

Later that night, they sink into the sofa and decide to call in reinforcements tomorrow, preferably ones that have painting experience. They've made such a mess of the kitchen that they hang a sheet in the doorway so that they don't have to look at it, and unpack the take-out on the coffee table.

"What did we learn from this experience?" Rory asks and looks at her mother from the floor; Lorelai is lying on the sofa with her head hanging over the side, a towel over her face.

"Why are you asking me this, why? Who says you have to learn something from every experience?!" Lorelai moans from under the towel.

"Well, evolution, I guess. It's the whole human race thing; being able to learn from our experiences is what made us climb down the trees and stop exclusively eating bananas."

"I think we might have been happier up there with the bananas…"

Rory laughs. "See, but you wouldn't have known that if you hadn't come down the tree first." She takes the towel off of Lorelai's head and gives her a stern look. "I'll ask again – what did we learn from this experience?"

"Fine." Lorelai sits up and reaches for a cheeseburger. "Fine. No more do-it-yourself projects that require a ladder. Any work that involves a ladder gets out-sourced."

"Thank you!"

They finish their cheeseburgers in silence, and Lorelai contemplates how to best tackle the matter of the package. She reclines into the sofa and watches Rory clear the table; after she's done, she also sinks into the sofa and closes her eyes.

"A movie?" Rory asks. "I'm in a mood for something light and breezy, even borderline stupid."

Lorelai shakes her head. "How about we just talk?"

"Ok, sure." Rory's head rests on her shoulder. "But I should warn you, I might fall asleep."

Lorelai smiles to herself sadly and thinks it's highly unlikely.

"So… what's in the package?" Lorelai asks and she feels Rory tense up instantly. "Have you opened it?"

A silence. "No." Very short and clipped.

"Are you going to?"

Another silence. "Eventually." Again, very short and somewhat annoyed.

"Do you know what's in there?"

An exasperated sigh and Rory sits up and glares at her. "What's with all the questions? I feel like you should be shining a flashlight in my eyes."

Lorelai sits up as well and frowns at her. "What's with all of the mono-syllabic answers? And if the flashlight would make you elaborate, I'll go get one right now."

Rory turns away and looks at her feet. "I don't want to talk about it."

Lorelai scoots closer to her and strokes her hair. "Come on, spill. When I pulled that thing out of my purse today, you looked so pale like you'd just seen a ghost, and not a friendly one. It scared me. And now this, it scares me even more." Rory still doesn't look at her, but Lorelai can feel her relax a little. "Do you know what's in there?"

A moment of hesitation, then a slight nod. "I'm guessing it's a book."

"OK." Lorelai puts her hand around Rory and pulls her closer. "Any particular reason why this book almost gave you a heart-attack in the middle of Luke's diner?"

Rory doesn't look at her, but rests her head on her shoulder again. "A few", she says quietly.

"You want to tell me what they are?"

"If I say no, will you stop asking?"

"Maybe, but I'll come back to it eventually, so you might just as well get it over with now."

There's a silence as Rory tries to get ready to say the name and to hear herself say it. She can't remember the last time she did. She knew this conversation was coming ever since she laid her eyes on that package this morning; ever since then, she's been trying to prepare for it somehow and still, she's not ready.

"Jess sent it," she hears herself breathe and instantly her heart clenches and her eyes begin to sting.

"How do you know? You haven't opened it," Lorelai says quietly.

"I don't need to, I know he sent it."

"Has he sent you books before?"

Rory shakes her head. "No, not books. A book. Only one."

"When?"

"A while ago. It came when you were at that seminar with Sookie."

"OK, so… what do these books mean?" As soon as she utters the words, Rory sits up again and looks at her; there's such desperation in her face that Lorelai just sits there frozen as Rory gets up and starts walking around the room.

"What do they mean? I have no idea. I have no idea why he sends them, I have no idea where they're coming from, I have no idea where he is. He just left, remember? He didn't say goodbye or say where he was going, or what he was planning to do or why he left. How should I know what the books mean?"

She's yelling now and Lorelai can see that tears are not far behind, but she's determined to get to the bottom of this now that a crack in the damn has appeared. She gets up and walks over to Rory, stopping in front of her. She gently holds her by the shoulders.

"Honey, what I meant was… what do these books mean to you?"

Rory looks at her, then leans on the wall behind her and slowly slides to the floor. She closes her eyes and shakes her head. "I don't know." She's quiet for a moment and Lorelai sits down next to her, but says nothing, just waits silently. "I miss him, Mom. And the books, they're him because he writes in them and when I read them, it's like he's here." She's crying now, and Lorelai holds her close and strokes her hair gently. "I don't want to miss him, but I can't help it."

She lets Rory cry for a while; as she feels the sobs subside a little, Lorelai leans in closer to her daughter and says, "If it helps, I'm sure Jess misses you too."

Rory looks at her with wide eyes and an unspoken question behind them. Lorelai smiles a little and nods her head. "Honey, he's sending you these books for precisely the same reason that you're reading them – to feel close to you. For him, sending them to you is a form of communication."

Rory gives her a confused look and shakes her head in disbelief. "That doesn't make any sense. If he wanted to talk to me, he could just call."

"Oh, really?" Lorelai's eyebrows lift up. "Well, let's see how that would work. He left without a word. He probably thinks you hate him, but on some small level, he actually hopes that you don't. If he calls, he might have to face the fact that you do hate him; therefore, he sends the books. That way, he gets to talk to you on some weird level – but Jess is weird all over, so that's not surprising - but doesn't have to face you talking back."

Rory thinks about this for a minute, and in some twisted way, it sort of makes sense.

"OK," she nods. "OK, fine. Sure, why not – he's actually somewhere out there, pining for me." She gives a sad little smile and hugs her knees to her chest. "But if he is, then why did he leave in the first place? Everything was fine, I thought we were happy… well, I know I was happy, but I guess he wasn't…"

Lorelai looks at her daughter and carefully thinks about what she'll say next. Having heard what's been going on in Rory's head and remembering all the things she noticed before when looking at the two of them together, she has her suspicions about Jess and his reasons for leaving, but she's not sure how much she should share with Rory. As she looks at her, so small and so miserable, she realizes fully that her daughter is in love. Rory's in love, and it's not a crazy teen infatuation; it's clearly not a crush because it's been months since Jess has been anywhere near her and still, here she is on the floor, hurt and crying, and Lorelai knows this is serious, so she decides to treat it as such.

"Rory, did you ever consider that maybe Jess left _because_ he was happy?"

Rory looks at her blankly. "Ok, you do realize how absurd that sounds, right?"

Lorelai nods. "Yeah, but bear with me for a second." She concentrates and continues. "I didn't like him very much in the beginning, mostly because of that scene we had when he first came over here, and then crashing your car didn't help either - but those weren't the only reasons. The main reason that I didn't like him was because he didn't care. About anything. About anyone. And he was perfectly happy not to care, it allowed him to do exactly as he pleased, there were no strings. And then you started to care about him, the boy that didn't care about anything at all, and it freaked me out, because I thought you would most definitely get hurt. You started to date, and because I was so freaked out, I watched him, Rory, I watched him carefully and I saw something change in him, because he was different with you, different around you and I stopped freaking out."

Rory smiles. "I know that, you told me before."

"Yeah, I know, but now, I'm trying to think about it the way Jess would. Maybe he started to care too much, and it scared him. Maybe he got hurt before and he was scared of getting hurt again." She stops and shrugs her shoulders. "I mean, we don't know much about his life in New York. Maybe there was something there that made him decide not to care about anything or anyone again, and when he did, it scared him and he ran."

Rory looks straight ahead and it's like Lorelai has managed to form her own thoughts into words that Rory herself couldn't quite put together. There was a dimension to Jess that was always present but also untouchable, there was a piece of him that he wouldn't let her see, and until she stumbled into it accidentally, everything was fine – but once she did, he somehow started to slip away from her, started to hide and close himself off, like she's tapped into something dangerous that he wanted to protect her from, but couldn't really control because it was stronger than him. She suddenly remembers the look in his eyes when this side of him first appeared in front of her and her skin crawls, just like it did then, and she shakes off the memory quickly.

Lorelai wraps her arms around her and kisses her head. They sit still for a long time and she feels completely helpless and unable to comfort Rory for the first time in her life, so she just holds her tighter and sadly remembers the times when just holding her could fix any problem and heal any pain.

"You should go to sleep," she whispers into Rory's hair and feels her nod her head. They get up together and walk to Rory's bedroom, where Lorelai tucks her in and turns to leave the room.

"Mom?"

She turns around and walks back to the bed. "Yeah?"

Rory looks at her hands. "Would you hand me that book from my bag?"

Lorelai smiles sadly. "Sure." She walks over to the bag, finds the envelope inside and hands it to Rory. She takes it without looking up.

"Thanks," she says quietly, and Lorelai leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

............

"_What is it with you and school?"_

_The question comes out of nowhere and for a moment, he just stares down at her blankly over the book he's holding; it's like she's just addressed him in another language and he needs some time to interpret the words correctly. Once he does, he doesn't like them, so his eyes return to the book. _

"_You really know how to kill a perfect moment," he says. They are in the park; he's sitting on a bench, reading; she's lying next to him with her head in his lap, going over some notes for school. They'd been sitting like that for a few hours and up until a minute ago, it was a great afternoon._

"_I'm serious," he hears her say and he smiles. _

"_So am I." He turns the page._

"_Are you going to look at me?"_

_He smiles again. "I don't know; are you going to move on to something else?"_

"_Jess…"_

_He closes the book with a huff and meets her eyes. "What?"_

_The expression in his eyes is discouraging, but she doesn't look away. "Why do you hate school so much?"_

"_I don't hate it," he says. "It's just boring. After forty-five minutes there, I feel like I'm in jail and serving a life sentence."_

"_Can't you just read something? Sit in the back, take a book with you and just sit through it?"_

_He shakes his head. "Tried that. Gave it up after they took twelve books away from me and told me I can pick them up at the principal's office." He shrugs. "They're still there; I finally realized it was a horrible waste of books."_

"_Then just sit there and think about something else." _

_His face changes and his eyes darken; the look that comes into them sends a chill through her. It's not a new one, she's seen it before – it's a look he gets when his mind goes to a place that she doesn't know and he won't let her see. It's like a dark curtain falls inside his eyes and he just closes off to her. He just stares at her and says nothing._

"_Even if you pass all your tests, they can still fail you because of your attendance, or lack of it," she says quietly._

"_So what?" His tone is flat. "I don't care."_

_The dark expression is still there so she treads carefully. "I know, but that's ridiculous. You're smarter than any kid in that school, and most of the teachers. You can pass any test with minimal effort. Are you really going to let them fail you over attendance?"_

_He shrugs. "I really don't care." He opens his book again, but she snatches it away and gives him an exasperated look._

_"Jess, all you have to do is sit there! Just sit there, let your mind wonder, think of whatever for a few hours." _

_He feels his focus shifting and he struggles for control for a moment, but the images appear quickly and start a familiar dance in his head, a dance that always ends the same, with a flash of an alley and frozen eyes that stare into emptiness. These pictures come whenever his mind wanders, when there's nothing to distract him, when there's no books to read, jobs to do or people to talk to. When there are distractions, he can handle the thoughts – they hover in the background, but he can handle them; they only disappear when he's with her, because she takes him over so completely that everything else fades away. He grits his teeth and looks away from her._

"_Just let it go," he says and takes his book back. She sits up abruptly and turns to face him._

"_No, I'm not letting it go." She frowns at him. "Why are you being so unreasonable about this? Are you seriously ready to be held back a year just because you're too bored to sit through a couple of classes every day?" He's pretending to read. "Can't you see how idiotic that is?" He still doesn't look at her and this infuriates her, so she yells, "You just have to sit there and stare into space, how hard can that possibly be?!", and snatches his book away again._

_He jumps up from the bench so fast that she flinches; he walks a few steps before he turns around and the expression on his face is so hard that it scares her._

"_You have no idea what goes on in my head," he says quietly. "You have no idea what I have to deal with when I just sit there and stare into space." She feels her skin go cold at his tone; she suddenly wishes he'd yell rather than ever having to hear him use this tone with her again. She waits for him to continue, but he stays quiet and just stands there, staring her down._

_She swallows and slowly digests the stare. There's definite warning in it, a warning not to go any further, but she suddenly realizes it comes from fear, not anger. She feels like that curtain has lifted a little and she's caught a glimpse of the person behind it._

"_Maybe you should just tell me," she says softly. As the words come out, there's definite fear in his eyes for a moment, and he looks away quickly. He takes a deep breath, walks back and sits opposite her, but it is a long time before he lifts his eyes to hers. "I will," he says. "When I'm ready."_

"_Jess.."_

"_I don't want to lie to you", he cuts her off and the pleading in his voice makes her heart skip a beat. "Please, don't make me lie to you."_

_She holds his gaze for a long time, but the look in his eyes doesn't change, the silent appeal in it remains, steady and constant. Slowly, she nods her head, and lifts her hand to stroke his face gently._

"_Okay," she says. "When you're ready."_

_.........._

He was never ready; there were bits and pieces scattered over several fights, but eventually, he left and she still doesn't know what it was that haunted him and she probably never will. Maybe she should have pushed harder, but then she remembers the one time that she did and she also remembers that was the last time she ever saw him.

She looks back down to the book in her hands and tears the envelope. The book is fairly thin and the title reads: _Johnathan Livingston Seagull_. She opens it and starts to read.


	7. Hat Full Of Rain

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them . No copyright infringement intended.

* * *

_Mood music: Long Way Home, Tom Waits_

* * *

**07. Hat Full Of Rain**

He arrives to Chicago by truck, one of those big ones that have crossed the continent hundreds of times; it's driven by Frank, a guy dressed in flannel who wears a baseball cap turned backwards. When Jess first climbed into the cabin somewhere in Nebraska and laid his eyes on the driver, he almost laughed out loud at the irony, but as they made their way east, he started to appreciate it instead. The resemblance goes beyond the taste in clothing, and at times he feels like the guy is actually channeling Luke's spirit and it is a freakish twist of fate that's comforting and disturbing at the same time.

At first, conversation is slow; Frank asks a few questions but the answers are short and ambiguous, so he gives up, loads up the cd player and turns his attention to the road. It quickly becomes apparent that Frank likes Elvis, Ray Charles and Quincy Jones, with bits of Kenny Rogers and Johnny Cash thrown in for good measure, and that he has no qualms over wailing along with them if the mood strikes him, and it soon turns out that it often does. After suffering through a particularly painful sing-along of "Higwayman" that he suspected made Johnny Cash roll over in his grave, Jess throws in the towel, deciding there's no way conversation could possibly be worse than this.

"So, have you been doing this long?", he yells and is relieved to see Frank reach for the volume control.

"What, trucking?" He shakes his head. "Longer than I care to remember."

"Probably takes you to some interesting places, though."

Frank shrugs. "I guess. But when you've been on the road for a while, they all start to look the same."

"Yeah," Jess nods. It's a feeling he knows well. "Yeah, they do."

Franks gives him a quick look-over and a small smiles escapes under the moustache.

"How about you, kid? Where are you from?"

"Here, there…everywhere…" Jess looks out the window. "Depends on the week."

"Roaming the country a little?"

He nods. "Yeah, I guess you could say that."

"Are you enjoying it?"

The question is simple enough, but Jess believes the answer to be complicated, so he's surprised when he registers the words that come out of his mouth. "No, not really." He wonders where they came from for a moment, but quickly realizes that they're actually true, and in a weird way, it's liberating to get them out.

"Why don't you just go home then?"

"It's a long story."

Frank laughs. "It can't be longer than the road to Chicago."

Jess laughs as well. "Probably not." He rummages through his pockets and fishes out his cigarettes. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Be my guest," Frank shrugs. "The ashtray's below the cd player."

There's silence while Jess lights his cigarette and rolls down the window. For a moment, he studies the glow on the cigarette tip and thinks about quitting. The silence stretches and Frank starts humming softly along to Sinatra playing in the background, and the impending wailing fest quickly brings Jess back to reality.

"I didn't leave very well," he says as he finds the ashtray and opens it.

"Ah," Frank nods. "That's just a fancy way of saying you ran away." Jess gives him an annoyed stare, but Frank just shrugs. "Sounds a little better, but it's the same thing."

Jess just looks out of the window again and thinks that maybe he was better off with the wailing.

"So, who did you run away from?"

"No-one." The words come out a little too quickly, the tone is a touch too defensive and he realizes all this a little too late; in an attempt to steer the conversation into safer territory, he opts for the lesser of two evils.

"I flunked out of school," he says.

Frank looks at him and studies his face for a while, then returns his eyes to the road. "Lazy or stupid?"

Despite himself, Jess laughs at the matter-of-fact tone of the question. "No, definitely not stupid."

Frank nods. "Yeah, I didn't figure you were. Lazy it is."

"To some extent, yeah; but mostly just uninterested."

Frank laughs. "I'm sure it sounds better to you when you wrap it up real nice and stick a little bow on top."

Jess just rolls his eyes and Frank laughs again.

"So you flunked out. Your parents give you a hard time?"

"No, my uncle."

"You live with your uncle?"

"I lived with him for a while, yeah." Jess looks out of the window and Luke's face briefly appears in the dirty glass. He looks away.

"What about your parents?"

Flashes of New York run through his mind; flashes of empty bottles scattered around the dirty apartment, flashes of roaming the streets, flashes of needle-marks on his arm and waking up in strange places, flashes of ambulance lights and sirens, and of empty eyes staring into space. He absent-mindedly rubs the place on his chest where there are scars that bear witness to it all. Then there's the distant, still images of California, and the man he pinned so much hope on but who just disappeared, again. The silence stretches and Franks looks at him, but finds such darkness on his face that he just turns away.

"What is he like, your uncle?" It's an unexpected question and it throws Jess off a little. Luke's image re-enters his mind and he tries to think of appropriate words to describe him, but none he can think off seem right. He looks at Frank and suddenly a good answer is right there and he laughs.

"A lot like you, actually. You have the same flannel shirt-baseball cap thing going." He smirks. "But you're a much more… _passionate_… singer."

Frank laughs too and shakes his head. "Imagine that. You run away from home and manage to hitch a ride with your uncle's look-a-like. Weird how life turns out sometimes, isn't it?"

Jess shrugs. "Coincidence."

"Right, coincidence," Franks nods. "So he gave you a hard time about flunking out?"

"Yeah, pretty much. He yelled, I yelled. Then he said I had to go, so I did."

Frank looks at him again and shakes his head in disbelief. "You flunked out of school and he kicked you out of the house? That's harsh, man."

Jess knows it would be easy to just stick to this version of events, but it would be also grossly unfair to Luke, and for reasons not entirely clear to him, he can't even let this truck-driving guy that he's most likely never going to see again once they reach Chicago, think badly of Luke.

"He didn't exactly kick me out because I flunked out. He kicked me out after I said I wasn't going back to school."

"Ah, that makes more sense." Frank smiles. "That just makes him somewhat strict and looking out for your best interests, but it makes you stubborn and short-sighted."

Jess puts the cigarette out and has nothing to say to that. He decides he's had enough of this conversation and would rather endure the singing again. He rummages through his backpack and pulls out the notebook and a pencil. Determined to ignore Frank completely, he scribbles for a while, but his mind is not in it entirely, there's something else nagging at him. He turns his attention to it and realizes he's still looking for the right words to describe Luke. Overbearing comes to mind first, but doesn't feel right, so he thinks harder. Controlling is the next candidate, but it also doesn't quite fit, not generally. Persistent, responsible, reliable… all those capture parts of Luke, but not the whole. And then, suddenly, he realizes that he's looking in the wrong place - he doesn't need a word, he needs a concept, and the moment he knows what he's looking for, the right word is there: _friend_. In an instant, he completely forgets about his vow of silence, and the words just form on their own.

"Luke was a friend," he says to the window.

Frank just nods and smiles to himself. "Yeah, I figured as much."

Jess goes back to his notebook and suddenly the words come to him, and he writes in silence. There's no wailing from Frank, just the torn voice of Tom Waits in the background and somehow, it's fitting for this situation and Jess enjoys it. The hours and the miles roll by, and Frank makes a short stop somewhere in Iowa; they pick up lunch and coffee and soon they're back on the road. Writing somehow comes easy today and he takes advantage of that, spending the next few hours completely lost to the world around him, filling page after page effortlessly. He only stops and looks up when it becomes difficult to see, realizing that there are thick clouds that promise rain forming overhead. He closes the notebook and realizes it almost full, with only about a dozen or two empty pages remaining. He thinks that he should get a new one, but he knows it won't be the same.

"Fancy little book you got over there", comes Frank's voice over Tom Waits.

"It was a gift," Jess says and lays it down on the dashboard. Frank says nothing and just watches him stare out of the window for a while. The first rain drops hit the windshield and Tom Waits disappears in the backround.

"So, who's the girl?"

Jess stiffens slightly but recovers quickly. "There is no girl."

"Oh, there's a girl," Frank smiles.

"You're delusional, " Jess says and looks for the cigarettes again.

"What's her name?"

"There is no girl, so there is no name," Jess replies and lights the cigarette.

"Right," says Frank, smiling. Jess stares out of the window and watches her image slowly form in his mind as the soft piano sounds spill from the speakers. He hopes Frank isn't going to sing, and he doesn't; instead he turns up the volume and the piano gives way to a voice that echoes around them.

_She may be the face I can't forget_  
_A trace of pleasure or regret_  
_May be my treasure or the price I have to pay_  
_She may be the song that summer sings_  
_May be the chill that autumn brings_  
_May be a hundred different things_  
_Within the measure of a day_

_She may be the beauty or the beast_  
_May be the famine or the feast_  
_May turn each day into a Heaven or a Hell_  
_She may be the mirror of my dreams_  
_A smile reflected in a stream_  
_She may not be what she may seem_  
_Inside her shell...._

The song is familiar in a sense of melody; he's heard it in passing before, but he never really listened, and now, in this small space, the words echo of the walls and are impossible to escape or ignore. His heart clenches again, and soon enough, the instinct is back, the one that makes him want to shut his ears and yell, to get out of here and run, but at the same time, he feels tired, so very tired of all the running. For a moment, he stops struggling and gives in to the images floating in his head, the memories that present themselves in slow motion and take over his mind, making everything else disappear – there's just the song and now, she's in it.

_She, who always seems so happy in a crowd_  
_Whose eyes can be so private and so proud_  
_No one's allowed to see them when they cry_  
_She may be the love that cannot hope to last_  
_May come to me from shadows of the past_  
_That I'll remember 'till the day I die_

_She may be the reason I survive_  
_The why and wherefore I'm alive_  
_The one I'll care for through the rough and ready years_  
_Me, I'll take her laughter and her tears_  
_And make them all my souvenirs_  
_And where she goes I've got to be_  
_The meaning of my life is She…_

"_She_ gave you that notebook," Frank declares and turns on the wind-shield wipers.

Jess glares at him. "What are you, psychic or something?"

Frank shakes his head and laughs. "No, I just used to spend a lot of time in Vegas." He looks at Jess. "You learn to read people when you gamble for a living."

"I don't want to talk about her," Jess says and stares out of the window again.

"I know," Frank chuckles. "I bet you've been running across half the country not wanting to talk about her, probably not wanting to think about her either."

"God, do you ever just let go?", Jess says to the window and rubs his eyes.

"You can't pin this on me, you know." Frank tosses him a glance. "If you hadn't wanted to spill your guts on some level, you wouldn't have done it. We both know that."

For a moment, Jess says nothing; he just reluctantly admits to himself Frank is right.

"So, what happens when you get to Chicago?"

Jess shrugs. "I don't know. The usual, I guess." He leans back into his seat and closes his eyes. "I find a park bench to call home, I get a job, work for a few days, get another ticket to somewhere."

"What happens when you get to somewhere?"

"Same thing."

"For how long?"

"As long as it takes."

"As long as it takes to do what, exactly? Pull your head out of your ass?" Frank shakes his head. "I thought we established earlier that you weren't stupid, but I'm starting to have my doubts."

Jess sits up abruptly and glares at him. "What do you want from me?"

Frank laughs quietly. "I don't want anything from you. As hard as it may be for you to believe, I have no agenda here. This is not about me, it's about you, and you…," he looks at Jess, ".. should go home."

"Exactly! It's about me, and you don't know shit about me!" He realizes he's yelling but he doesn't care. "I answer a dozen of your questions and that makes you an expert on my life? God, you're like a cheap fortune-teller, one lucky guess and a few presumptions, and you think you can dish out a solution to everything. It's not that simple and it's not that easy!" He takes a breath and takes his voice down a few notches. "When I left, I didn't do it because of Luke or because of… I didn't leave because of them. I left because of me, because there were things in me that I had to deal with on my own, things that I had to fix, things that could hurt… people." He leans back into the seat. "I can't go back until I've done that."

Frank nods and studies Jess for a moment. "So, are you done with it yet?"

Jess glances at the notebook sitting on the dashboard. "I'm getting there."

"And after you're done, are you going home?"

It is a million-dollar question, that one, and there's no answer to it yet. On his way to California, he would have said no, but it's been a strange journey since then – a journey that finally helped lay to rest some of the ghosts that haunted him since he left New York, but that also brought into focus a new force, an addiction of different nature that had its own way of torturing him that was bitter-sweet and all-consuming. As he slowly put behind the demons of New York, he dared not name this new hunger, because the only word that came to mind was the one word he had no faith in.

"I don't know." He shrugs. "It's a scary idea."

Franks looks at him. "Scarier than the prospect of waking up every morning for the rest of your life and going over a long list of what-ifs and might-have-beens?"

Jess nods. "For now, yeah."

"You're hilarious, you know that? " Frank shakes his head. "First, you run from one thing; then you figure out it won't go away if you don't face it, so you run again, only this time you do it so you can face it on your own terms. Somewhere along the line you discover something else inside you that you'd rather not face, and here you are, perfectly willing to run again." He looks at Jess. "But kid, the same principle applies to everything you run from - these things that become such a big part of who you are, you can't out-run them. You can't block them or ignore them or bury them, because if you do, one day they'll just come back and bite you in the ass."

Jess looks at him. "You really have a way with words, you know that?"

Frank shrugs. "You're not a little girl, I'm not your nanny and things are what they are."

"Yeah," Jess nods and stares out of the window again. "Things are what they are."

It's dark out and it's raining, but in the distance, hazy lights appear on the horizon.

"That's Chicago," Frank points. "Where do you want me to drop you?"

Jess shrugs. "Wherever, I don't care."

Frank looks at him and says nothing; he just turns his eyes back to the road. The lights gradually grow brighter and closer, and soon there's roads and cars everywhere, and vague shapes of buildings appear outside the windows, blurred by the rain. After an hour of navigating through the chaos of cars, horns, intersections and traffic lights, Frank pulls into a parking lot and shuts down the engine. Jess had dozed off and the change of dynamics startles him; he sits up and gets his bearings. He looks out the window and realizes they've stopped.

"Is this my stop?"

Frank is leaning on the steering wheel, and he nods. "Yeah, this is it."

Jess glances out the window then opens his backpack, digs out a hoodie and pulls it on. He takes the notebook from the dashboard, places it in the backpack and closes it. He shrugs and smiles at Frank.

"So, this is it. Thanks for everything, Frank." He looks into Frank's eyes and hesitates for a moment. "And by that, I mean thanks for the ride and... you know, for looking into your crystal ball for me."

Frank laughs. "It was my pleasure." He studies Jess for a moment. "Would you do me a favor?"

"Sure, if I can."

"See that building over there?" He points at the lights across the parking lot. "It's a motel. The prices are good and the food is great. There's bathrooms and clean sheets on the beds. I want you to take this," he pulls a hundred dollar bill from his pocket, "and check in. I want you to eat something, then take a shower and get a good night's sleep."

"Frank, I'm not taking your money." Jess shakes his head.

Frank ignores hm. "In the morning, I want you to walk across the street to the post office over there," he points out the direction, "and call your uncle. Will you do that for me?"

He looks at Jess and it's a firm look that is difficult to ignore. Jess stares back. "Frank, I'm not taking your money," he repeats.

Frank ignores him again. "Will you do that for me?"

"Frank…"

Frank rolls his eyes. "Oh would you just get over yourself already?" He sticks the money in Jess's backpack. "Just get out of here and do as I say."

Jess smiles and shakes his head. Frank extends his hand and Jess shakes it; he then climbs down from the truck. The engine starts and he watches the tail-lights disappear in the rain, then he slowly turns around and walks across the parking lot and into the motel.


	8. Look In the Mirror

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them . No copyright infringement intended.

* * *

_Mood Music: Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, U2_

* * *

**08. Look In The Mirror**

Frank was right - the motel is pretty great.

Jess showers for over an hour; he just lets water run over him and carry the time away. He thinks of nothing, his head blissfully empty and his mind at peace. When he steps out of the shower, he stands over the sink and stares at his reflection in the mirror for a long time. He's not sure what he is expecting to find, but no great revelations come to him – he just notices that he's grown thinner. It's like all the flesh on his body has somehow gone into muscle and there is now this thin, wiry creature staring back at him. Everything else is the same – the face, the scars, the tattoo. He goes back into the room and collapses on the bed, breathing in the smell of fresh sheets and enjoying the softness of the mattress, appreciating all the little, everyday comforts that he hasn't had in a long time. This doesn't last very long, because there are more important things to do – he collects his clothes from the floor and carries them to the sink, and spends the next hour washing them, then hangs them in the shower and over the chairs in the room to dry.

After settling on the bed, he reaches for the notebook on the nightstand; he turns it over in his hands a few times but his heart is not in it, so he puts it back and reaches for the book next to it instead. There's only two chapters left until he's done with it, and for a moment he can't believe how quickly he goes through them. He removes the postcard that serves as a page marker and starts to read; as usual, the world around him disappears immediately and there's just the new world that lives in the book. An hour passes in oblivion to everything; it is only when he reaches the end that he registers the thunderstorm that rages outside and he thinks of Frank with gratitude. It would be a horrible night to go through without a roof over his head.

As he pulls the covers over himself and turns off the light, the thoughts of tomorrow slowly creep into his head. He promised to call Luke; maybe not in so many words, but he promised it nonetheless just by being in this bed now and he knows that he'll do it – he just has no idea what to say once he does. He imagines different scenarios of the conversation, but none seem right, and after tossing and turning for an hour, he just pushes the thoughts out of his head and decides to just deal with it when the time comes. For a short moment, he's relieved to get it out of his mind, but minds like to play tricks, and the minute thoughts of Luke disappear, Rory's face takes center stage and he knows there's no way of pushing those thoughts away until they fade on their own so he just embraces the yearning in his heart that always comes with them, and hugs the pillow closer.

_It is Saturday and they are in Luke's apartment, watching a movie. It's Out of Africa, and she picked it because it is a movie she loves; he hasn't seen it before and she wants to share it with him. She knows it by heart and so she spends the better part of the next few hours watching him watch it. She studies his face, its shapes and shadows; his eyes are dark and there's concentration in them; his lips are parted slightly and she immediately thinks of kissing. He's sitting with his legs stretched out on the coffee table in front of him, his right arm propped against his forehead and his left resting on her shoulder, where he makes little absent-minded circles with his fingers. He has no idea she's staring; he never notices anything when he's concentrating. She looks back at the television and sees the movie is almost over; she slides down on the sofa and stretches out, resting her head in his lap, and watches the last few scenes – it's the ones she loves the most. As the final shot of the lions in the grass plain fades to black and the ending credits start to roll, she turns on her back and looks up at him."Well?"_

_His eyes settle on her face. "It's actually pretty good." He smiles. "But the book is better."_

_She gapes at him. "You read the book?"_

_He frowns for a moment and closes his eyes as he concentrates, leaning his head back on the sofa; then he slowly recites: "If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?" He looks back at her._

"_You read the book.", she declares and for a moment it chills her that this passage he knows by heart is the one she loves most. _

"_Yeah, a long time ago." He smiles and starts playing with her hair._

"_You should have told me; I wouldn't have picked it if I'd known."_

_He frowns. "Why not? It's still a good movie."_

"_I know," she sighs and reaches for the remote. "But they can never make them as good as the books." She turns off the tv and looks at him again. "Do you still have it? The book?"_

_He nods his head and smiles, looking around. "Probably. It should be around here somewhere, I keep the ones I like. However.." He looks back at her. "… if it's the love story in the movie that you're hooked on, you might be disappointed."_

_She looks surprised. "That's not in the book?" She frowns. "I thought it was based on a true story."_

"_It's an autobiography, and it's there, but nowhere near as promounced as in the movie. There's just hints." He smiles. "No grandeur of this scale", he nods towards the TV._

_She looks away from him. "So you don't think it really happened that way, like in a movie?"_

"_Bits and pieces of it, maybe." He ruffles her hair and smirks. "Are you disappointed?"_

"_Maybe a little," she admits. _

_He laughs, and she looks up; he's shaking his head in disbelief and she frowns at him. "Oh come on, Rory, none of these great love stories are really true, either on film or on paper. They're just glorified versions of what someone wants to believe love is, be it a writer or a screen-writer who actually writes the thing, or the lonely old lady who reads trashy romance novels all day long."_

_She feels stung by the words and dejected by the tone. "Wow, you're bitter."_

_He frowns. "I'm not bitter, I'm realistic."_

_She looks away from him and crosses her arms on her chest. "Ok, but it's a bitter reality that you choose to see."_

_He rolls his eyes. "Come on, wake up. The only reason why this particular relationship", he points at the tv, "appears to be such a great love story to you is because the guy ends up dead – that part is actually true, he ends up dead in the book as well – but if he hadn't died, there would be no great love story. It would just be a story of two people in a beautiful country, who were together for a while and then went their separate ways."_

_She sits up and stares at him; there's an exasperated look on his face, like he's trying to explain something painfully obvious to her and she's not getting it. She doesn't think it's obvious at all._

"_Why?" she asks calmly as she looks at him._

_He's confused. "Why what?"_

"_Why would they go their separate ways? Why do you assume they wouldn't stay together?"_

_He laughs and looks at the floor, then points at the tv. "Did you even watch this movie?" She gives him an annoyed look. "Trust me, they wouldn't stay together, because this guy ultimately likes to be alone and do his own thing. After being domesticated for a while, he'd remember that and he'd want to leave. And he would have left, eventually."_

"_So you're saying that he didn't really love her?", she asks._

_He looks at her like she's completely missed the point. "No, that's not what I'm saying. They loved each-other, but they applied the emotion in different ways – for him, it was just a part of who he was and he didn't have any expectations of her aside from her being herself, while she actually expected him to change who he is –which is ridiculous in itself because it would make him give up things that, on some level, probably made her love him in the first place!" He shakes his head, leans back and closes his eyes. "It always happens in relationships - eventually, one person wants to change the other, and there's no love in that."_

_She stands up and walks around the room, thinking; somehow she feels that this discussion has outgrown the movie that inspired it and moved into territory that was much closer to home. There was a determination in his tone in that last sentence that sounded so final it's unsettling. She returns to the sofa and stands in front of him, her arms folded across her chest._

"_Do you think I'm trying to change you?"_

_He opens his eyes and for a moment she sees fear, but it vanishes quickly and is replaced with a firm stare._

"_I wasn't talking about you and me."_

_She stares right back. "Well, that was a pretty wide generalization you made at the end there, and you sounded very sure of it, so on some level you must think it applies to everyone." _

"_You're reading too much into this," he says as he gets up from the sofa and walks into the kitchen._

_She follows. "Really?" _

_He takes a soda out of the fridge and faces her. "Yes, really. It's not that big of a deal."_

_She leans on the counter opposite him. "Okay, fine – if it's not such a big deal, then why don't you just answer me?"_

_He looks away and devotes himself to the soda can in his hands. She knows the answer's not coming, so she switches gears._

"_You've changed_ me_", she says and looks him square in the eye. He stops fiddling with the can and searches her face for a moment. _

"_Not intentionally," he finally mumbles and sits on the counter. _

_She ignores the comment, walks over and stands in front of him. "I feel I should thank you for that, because I like the new me better – she gets smarter every day and she's learned things about herself that she didn't know were there before." She steps closer so she's standing right in front of him now, and she puts her hands on the counter, on either side of his legs. "You see, this is what I think happens when you share yourself with someone – you learn things and it's the things you learn that change you. It doesn't make you lose anything, it makes you grow."_

_He stares at her face; it's just inches away and although there's still resistance inside him, it is quickly melting away because she's so close and as usual, this robs him of a great deal of logic and reason. In a moment, her lips come up and meet his, and there's sweet abandon that wipes everything else from his mind and the focus moves elsewhere, to the way she smells and the softness of her skin as his hands come up to her face. As it always does, the kiss soon becomes more intense; his breath catches in his throat as he feels her hands slide up his legs and for a moment, he forgets about the kiss and just sits there, enjoying this new sensation. When she reaches his waist, she hooks her fingers under his belt and he opens his eyes to look at her. Their eyes meet and for a moment they just stare at each other, and he gently strokes the sides of her face with his thumbs, his hands tangled in her hair. She smiles and her eyes close as he starts planting small kisses along her cheek, but doesn't move to her lips – instead, he tilts her head a little and moves down to her neck. He's never kissed her there before, and the gentle wet traces he leaves there now send tingles down her spine and make her knees go weak. Instinctively, she clings to him harder and pulls at his belt, sliding him closer - she hesitates a moment, but then her hands move up under his shirt and she runs her palms up his back; the second she does, everything she's been feeling multiplies and then multiplies again and she marvels at how soft his skin is and how she can feel every muscle under it shift and change as he moves. She suddenly realizes that touching him like this does something to him, because his breathing changes and when he kisses her again, it's a very different kiss; it's demanding and firm, hectic and hungry and it wakes something in her that she's not sure she's ready to face, but at the same time, doesn't want to turn away from. She knows that she should withdraw her hands, but they somehow have their own agenda and continue their slow exploration of his skin, shaping circles on his back, each new one making him crazier than the last. It's such an innocent touch in a grand scheme of things that he can't believe the enormous effect it has on him and the sheer speed with which is spreads all over his body. Girls have touched him before, in places that are much more sensitive than the one she's exploring now, but there had never been such heat behind it, and he hates that little part of his brain that is screaming at him to stop this now, before it spirals out of control and he does something that will scare her. The idea of scaring her brings some sense into him and he slowly brings the kiss to an end and moves away from her slightly. She gives him a strange look but pulls away also, and folds her hands on her chest._

"_Luke's downstairs," he whispers and she nods her head._

"_Yeah, I know", she whispers back and smiles slightly, but the look she gives him is mysterious and challenging, and it stays with him long after she walks back into the living room._

He's torn from the dream by a loud horn that sounds outside the window; it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sunlight, and then another one to remember where he is. Soon enough, he manages to wrap his mind around reality, but his body is still very much in the dream so he steps into the shower again and waits for the cold water to wash the heat away, amazed how perfectly his mind can carry his memories over into dreams.

An hour later, he walks across the parking lot with coffee in hand, and watches the post office get closer with each step. He still has no plan how to tackle this phone call he now has to make, and he doubts he will be able to come up with one, no matter how many scenarios he tosses around his head. As he stops in front of the door, he realizes it's one of those things that he'll just have to do and see how they turn out. He goes inside, tosses the empty cup in the trash can by the door, walks to an empty booth and dials the number.

"Yeah?", comes Luke's voice; the phone shakes in Jess's hand and his mouth dries. He suddenly realizes this is much harder than he thought it was going to be, because something tugs at his heart and there's a lump in his throat. He swallows and tries to get a grip.

"Anyone there?", comes Luke's voice again and there's a hint of impatience in it. Jess leans his forehead against the phone, suddenly scared that Luke will hang up and knowing he won't be able to dial the number again if he does.

"Yeah…" He clears his throat. "Yeah, it's me."

There's a beat of silence on the other end. "Jess?"

He nods, then feels stupid; Luke can't see him. "Yeah, it's me."

"Are you okay?" The question comes fast and sounds urgent.

"Yeah, fine."

"Okay, good." He can hear the relief in Luke's voice and suddenly the guilt hits hard for not calling sooner.

"Sorry," he says. "I should have called before. It's just…" He scrambles to find the right words, and he suddenly remembers the phrase he heard the day before and it fits perfectly. "It just took some time to pull my head out of my ass."

There's another silence and he can feel Luke grin even before the sound comes over the wire. "Wow, I've got to write that one down."

Jess grins as well. "Be my guest, although I can't take credit for it. Just had it thrown my way yesterday."

"Smart man, whoever he is," says Luke.

"Yeah," Jess nods and there's another silence. "So, how are you?"

"Good… you know, the usual. Nothing much really changes around here."

"Yeah, I remember." He closes his eyes and pictures Luke standing by the counter, phone held to his ear by his shoulder as he pours a coffee.

"And you, how are you?"

He's not sure how to answer that question; he doesn't want to lie, but he doesn't want Luke to worry either.

"Okay." He finally says. "I've been better, but I've also been worse, so I'm okay."

He can hear Luke moving around, there's a sound of a door closing, and voices in the background disappear.

"Where are you, Jess?"

He doesn't want to answer that, so he says nothing and just waits for Luke to say something else, knowing that he doesn't really expect an answer either.

"Are you coming home?"

The question hangs in the air and at first he suspects he misunderstood the words, but somehow he knows he hadn't. He grips the receiver tighter and closes his eyes as the word _home_ echoes in his head.

"I didn't know I had that option," he says quietly.

There's a beat of silence on Luke's end, and his voice comes slowly. "Well, now you know."

Jess nods. "Yeah… now I know." His throat threatens to close again, so he clears it quickly. "Listen, I have to go."

There's a sigh on the other end. "Yeah, sure." A short pause follows. "Take care of yourself, Jess."

He nods. "I will."

Just as he gets ready to hang up, Luke's voice comes once more. "And Jess…"

"Yeah?"

"Call if you need anything." Jess can hear the urgency in his voice again, and again hates himself for putting it there. "Or, you know… just call."

He grips the phone tighter. "Yeah, okay… Thanks, Luke", he says quietly and hangs up the phone quickly. He takes a deep breath and rubs his eyes, then leans back against the glass and stares at the phone for a long time. His head is spinning and the conversation that just took place seems so unreal that for a moment he wonders if it actually happened. He slowly walks out of the booth and to the counter where a busy girl charges him for the call; he almost walks away before he remembers the book he finished yesterday. He finds an envelope and puts it inside, writes down the address and returns to the girl at the counter. He quickly hands it to her; then he spots the postcard display and he quickly chooses one. When the girl returns his change, he nearly runs out of the building.


	9. Secret Oceans

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them . No copyright infringement intended.

* * *

I would like to point out and explain one inconsistency that becomes apparent in this chapter, because most of you will probably notice it anyway. This story begins and unfolds after Jess leaves for California. In the series, this is when Rory graduates high-school and gets ready to go to Yale. However, for the purpose of this story, I'm pretending that these events (her graduation and going to Yale) take place a year later and that she still has another year in Chilton to do. This effectively makes Jess and Rory a year younger in this story, and here's why I decided to do it.

1. Even though the story is more than half-way written already, it's still a work I progress and I'm not sure I will be able to cram everything that I still need to have happen in that one summer between her graduation and leaving for Yale, and I don't want to rush it.

2. Even if time wasn't an issue, going to college is a huge thing to Rory and completely ignoring this dimension of her life just wouldn't work, but since it's not a plot issue in this story, it would just get in the way.

3. Finally, I don't want to write Yale, because details are important to me and I'm just not familiar enough with the college life in the US to be writing it. Again, it's not a plot issue here, and so it just makes more sense to me to leave it out all together.

I hope this change isn't a big issue to anyone, because in relation to this story, I feel it's a minor thing.

Thank you all again for reading, and special thanks and warm fuzzy feelings go out to all the people who've also taken the time to review.

* * *

_Mood music: Only when I Sleep, The Corrs_

* * *

**09. Secret Oceans**

She goes through _Jonathan Livingston Seagull_ much faster than she did through _Shadow of the wind_. It has nothing to do with the book itself, although this one is significantly shorter, but more to do with this new Rory that _Shadow of the wind _helped create. She doesn't flinch as much as she reads the notes and she doesn't get sidetracked so easily anymore. She can think about him whenever she wants, she doesn't fight those thoughts anymore and doesn't struggle against the memories when they come and take over. She just lets them be and lives through them so when the next book arrives, she just gives it a small smile as she unwraps it and reads the title: _Seven Years in Tibet_. She places it on her nightstand; it takes her a week to finish it.

She laughs like she used to, and goes to school. She does her homework and drinks coffee at Luke's in the morning. She walks around town with Lane and discusses music and Lane's latest crush. She goes to town meetings and takes part in festivals. She watches movies with Lorelai and makes small talk with Dean when she sees him on the street. Nothing appears different, and yet, everything is, because in all these things that she does, she carries him with her. He's always there, in a form of a little ache that she hides in her heart and doesn't allow anyone else to see. She placed it there, she set aside this piece just for him and it was so easy to do that it's frightening. It was easy to do because she realized, in that one moment many weeks ago, that the only way she could cope with him being gone is to let him back into her life and make him a part of it. Once she did, she felt better about herself, which is a contradiction in itself because it hurts to have him there, but somehow, although it's always present, it is a pain that is familiar and constant, and she can live with it. She can even be happy, she can laugh and she can smile, and it doesn't get in the way. She can study and do her homework, and it stays in the background. She can do everything she used to do, and it makes no claim on her.

Unless she seeks it out. At night, when she goes to bed, she tiptoes to that place where he lives, and looks for him, reaches for him and lets him out, just to make sure that he's still there, because she doesn't want to lose him again.

...........

_She's sitting at the counter at Luke's, waiting for Jess to finish his shift. It's been a crazy day and she rushed to get here, so she came unprepared, meaning she hasn't got anything to read with her, so she doodles on napkins and thinks how she has no talent for drawing whatsoever. Suddenly remembering something that even she can't mess up, she places her hand on the napkin and outlines its shape. When she removes her hand and studies her masterpiece, she shakes her head in disbelief, thinking a six-year old would probably do a better job of it. Having confirmed again that drawing is definitely not one of her talents, she gives up on doodling all together and looks around for him._

_Two old ladies are sitting at the table by the window, the one she and Lorelai like to call their own. Jess is standing by the table, coffee pot in hand, getting an ear-full of chit-chat, looking somewhat trapped and definitely bored. She can tell he's not listening because his eyes are darting around, and she chuckles quietly as he watches him look for a graceful exit._

"_Excuse me, can I get some service over here?" she calls out playfully, and she watches him smile as he quickly excuses himself and walks over._

"_And it was just getting interesting," he says with a smirk as he reaches the counter and sets down the coffee. _

"_Yeah, I could tell", she laughs._

"_You're just jealous", he declares and winks at her._

"_Wow, you just see right through me, and I thought I was hiding it so well", she laughs again. "Are you almost done?"_

"_Yeah, just let me clear the tables and we can go," he says and heads out behind the counter again._

_She watches him clear the plates and wipe the tables, amazed how she never gets bored of looking at him. It somehow seems that every time she does, she discovers something new, some little detail that had somehow gone unnoticed before. She likes to watch him move, but with it comes the yearning to touch him that has been growing stronger and more persistent lately, and it's a yearning that makes her blush inwardly because those feelings are new and she's not sure where they might take her, but the temptation to find out gets harder and harder to resist. His eyes find her as he finishes with the last table; a small smirk forms on his face as she looks away from him quickly, worried that he'll see it all in her face. He walks over and leans on the counter next to her._

"_A penny for your thoughts," he says._

"_They don't come so cheap, sorry", she smiles sweetly._

"_Okay, name your price and we'll negotiate," he offers._

_She laughs and shakes her head. "You don't have that kind of money."_

"_You were thinking about me, weren't you?"_

_She hesitates for just a second but it's a second too long and the smirk is back on his face._

"_Come on, tell me", he whispers; she tries to think of a believable answer but draws a blank, and the look in his eyes turns mischievous. "Was I naked?" he asks with half a smile, and suddenly, she wants to wipe that smirk off his face. She looks him square in the eyes and smiles sweetly. "Actually, yeah."_

_The expression on his face is priceless, like that of a deer caught in the headlights, and she wants to laugh, but makes an effort to keep a straight face. He takes a moment to study her closely, but he can't read her at all, and suddenly he feels completely out of his depth. Uncertain how to navigate this unchartered territory, he decides to laugh it off._

"_I wasn't joking", she says seriously, and although right now she's saying it just to watch him squirm again, she also appreciates how absurd it is that she's actually not really lying._

"_Yeah, right," he laughs again but throws her a quizzical look nonetheless. Is she serious?_

_She rolls her eyes and sighs. "Why is that so hard for you to believe?" She smiles but there's a challenge in her eyes, and he braces himself. "Have I never been naked inside your head?"_

_If the previous expression was priceless, this one warrants an actual photograph, to be recorded in history forever. His mouth actually drops open and he gapes at her for what seems like an eternity. The question hangs in the air and he can't even begin to wrap his mind around it, let alone answer it, and he has no idea what to say next._

_She reaches for her coffee and studies him closely, suddenly realizing she actually wants to have this conversation, but he's still just staring at her, speechless. She wraps her fingers around her cup and looks at him over the rim._

"_Jess, you look like a stroke victim," she declares with a small smile, amazed at her ability to sound so very cool and composed but certain she's managing it solely because he clearly isn't. __He snaps out of it and his eyes dart around before he looks at her closely._

"_Are we really talking about this?" he asks incredoulously._

_She smiles. "Well, I am, but you're not bringing very much to the conversation."_

_He looks around again and lower his voice. "Here? Now?"_

"_We can go somewhere else, if you want", she says._

_He gets a grip and nods his head vigorously. "Yeah, I want to go somewhere else. This is not something I want to share with a diner full of people."_

_She looks around and blushes, forgetting herself. "Yeah, sure." She's still holding her coffee. "Can I take this with me?"_

_He nods and reaches for his jacket, and follows her into the street. They fall into step easily and wander in the general direction of the park. As usual, they end up at the bridge, which is the spot they somehow always end up in, and today is no different. They sit down facing each-other; she crosses her legs underneath herself and he hangs one of his off the side of the bridge and watches it dangle over the water for a few moments, still not quite believing they're having this conversation, wondering what brought it on, not quite daring to believe it's for real._

_Having regained some of the composure he so blatantly lost earlier, he looks at her and smiles._

"_So, sex…" He studies her closely, half worried she'll shy away from the topic now that he's thrown it out there, but he needs to be sure she's not having second thoughts about this._

"_Yes," she nods, but she's not sure where to go from here. Her brief surge of confidence melts away slowly and she knows she's blushing._

"_You've been thinking about it?" he asks softly. His tone is gentle and the moment instantly becomes less awkward._

"_You haven't?" she asks right back._

_He chuckles and shakes his head. "I am a guy, Rory. It sort of goes without saying."_

_She throws him aa annoyed look but he just shrugs and smiles. "What can I say? It's a given. I've been thinking about it probably since the first time I laid eyes on you." Now she looks genuinely shocked, and he tries to explain. "I'm just trying to be honest here."_

"_Yeah, brutally honest," she says. "It's a little disturbing."_

_He finds her eyes and that gentle look is back again. "If it helps, the way I think about it has changed", he says softly._

"_Changed how?" she asks._

_He shrugs. "I didn't know you before. Now I… know you. It's not the same."_

_Although the statement is ambiguous, she deciphers it correctly – there are feelings involved, and for now, that's enough for her, and she just nods her head slightly._

"_The fact that I've been thinking about it means next to nothing," he continues, "but the fact that you've been thinking about it, that's... huge. To me."_

_She looks at him and there's so much emotion in his face that she instantly knows that she can trust him with these thoughts and feelings that she needs to get out. Perhaps it's strange, but she also appreciates that he makes no attempt to touch her, he just sits across from her and waits patiently for the words to form and she's ready to talk._

"_I just…It's just…" __As much as she wants to get them out, the words somehow just refuse to roll off her tongue. She closes her eyes and takes a breath. "Could you not look at me while I say this?"_

_He hears him chuckle. "No," he says softly. "You're being ridiculous. Just look at me." Her eyes open. "Okay, now just say whatever it is that you want to say."_

"_It's just that when we kiss, something happens…" she blurts out, and once the first few words are out, it somehow gets easier. "Something happens and my mind just... disconnects and there's just this whole chaos of feelings that I have no control over," she says and blushes furiously, closing her eyes again._

_His voice comes slowly and quietly. "Yeah, I know. It happens to me too." She looks at him again and he smiles slightly. "And it's much harder for me, I swear to you."_

_She wasn't expecting this. "Harder how?"_

"_Because it happens much quicker, and it takes me much longer… to get over it and get a grip. Because I worry I'll scare you, I worry you'll think I'm pressuring you into something that you're not ready to do."_

"_Are you ready to do it?" she asks, her eyes fixed on his._

_He shrugs and smiles. "Yes. No. Maybe. I go back and forth. But ultimately, when it happens, if it happens, you get the final say in this."_

_She falls silent and contemplates this for a moment, but no new revelations come to her, no solutions, no answers present themselves. She sighs and looks at him. "I don't know what I want. I mean, I know what I want", she blushes again, "but it scares me."_

_He smiles. "That's okay. It can can wait for as long as you need it to."_

_Her face breaks in a smile and she scoots closer to him and settles in his arms, resting her head on his shoulder, and they just sit there together, still and silent, watching the sun set over the roofs._

_................._

"Luke!" she yells as she walks into the diner. "Luke, where are you? I've got Bert!"

Luke's head appears in the kitchen window and he shoots her a dirty look as she walks to the counter.

"Does the whole town need to know that you and your crazy mother have actually named my toolbox?" he scowls at her.

"Sorry," she whispers. "Do you want me to just take him upstairs?"

"Yes, that would be great, just take him…" he closes his eyes and shakes his head, ".. take _it_ upstairs." His head disappears but she can still hear him mumbling as she starts for the stairs. "It's a bloody toolbox, it has no gender, I must be going crazy too…"

She giggles to herself and walks up to the apartment. She opens the door, and looks for a good place to put Bert down. She finally takes him to the kitchen and sets him on a chair. She turns around to leave, and then she sees it, on the floor in the corner; it's partially covered by a blanket that's thrown over it, but one side is still showing. It is a box and there are big block letters printed on it – JESS.

She stands still for a minute, staring at the box, and just feels numb; then she wonders how come she's never noticed it before, but soon realizes she hasn't been up here since he left. This surprises her and she looks around curiously, trying to determine if anything's changed, but her eyes are soon drawn back to the box.

She takes a few steps closer and then stands still again, looking at it. She can't figure out if it's closed or not because of the blanket on top, and after hesitating for a moment, she pulls the blanket away. It's open, meaning that it's not taped together, but she still can't tell what's inside. His name is written on top as well, but it's not his handwriting, so she decides it's probably Luke's, which means that this is probably stuff that Jess left behind.

Absent-mindedly, she sits on the floor and stares at the box. It's close enough to touch, and close enough to handle, but she's not sure that she should. This new balance that she's managed to achieve within herself is still fragile and she's worried that there might be something in that box that will shatter it again. On the other hand, she wants to open it, badly, and maybe there's nothing in it at all – maybe it just used to be Jess's box. She looks at it again, and then pulls it beside her and opens it.

It is his stuff, but there's not very much. There's a pile of cds on top and she lays those down on the floor. There's some schoolbooks and she takes those out as well. There's an empty backpack that she remembers and she puts it aside. And on the bottom, there's a shirt. She takes it out and holds it up. It's a plain black T-shirt, clearly quite old because the black is not quite black anymore and it's quite stretched out; there's really nothing extraordinary about it, except that it's his. She puts it down in her lap and replaces everything else back in the box; then she holds the shirt again and looks at it, letting the material run through her fingers before she slowly lifts it up to her face. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply; her body tingles at the faint mixture of after-shave and cigarettes that still resides in it. She feels a few tears roll down her cheeks but she doesn't really cry; she smiles instead, rolls up the shirt and walks out of the apartment.

That night, she sleeps with the shirt on the pillow next to her.

............

Slowly, the weather becomes warm and the rains stop. The trees around town change their spring dresses of flowers into deep and luscious greens; the parks fill with children, and old ladies take their summer posts on the benches, armed with their knitting and romance novels.

Her finals approach and she studies more; she doesn't mind because it keeps her busy. She goes through her notes and reads the books she has to read, and even suffers through several stressful study sessions with Paris. The finals come and go, and she does well, and as she arrives at Luke's and finds a table, she stares out of the window and thinks there's just one more year of Chilton and of Stars Hollow in front of her, and then there is a whole new world of college ahead. She feels the usual surge of excitement at the thought, but there are also little sprinkles of regret.

She looks out of the window and spots Lorelai walking across the square, holding her cell phone to her ear and waving her free arm around wildly. The spectacle continues when she reaches Luke's door, but she doesn't come in until she's done with the phone call.

"Hey there, you", she says as she sinks into the chair, immediately reaching for Rory's coffee.

"Hey, that's mine!"

Lorelai shakes her head. "I know, get another one – let's not forget I gave birth to you."

Rory rolls her eyes. "How many times do you get to use that one?"

"Oh, as many times as I want, and no matter what you do, there will never be anything that can trump that, so just deal." She catches her breath. "I only have a few minutes. How did you do?"

Rory smiles. "Okay." She shakes her head. "I can't believe it's summer already."

"I know, it's sick." Lorelai smiles. "So, tonight, you and me – movie marathon and take-out, how about it? " She wrinkles her nose. "We can even get Indian food."

"Oh, you're so sweet." Rory smiles. "Sure, movie marathon sounds great. Want me to pick up something?"

"Yeah, just don't get anything too brainy or too dramatic… Oh, I know – let's do a tribute to Disney, but just the classics – you know, Sleeping beauty, Snow white, and that other chick, the one that loses her shoe and rides around in a pumpkin…"

"That would be Cinderella," Rory laughs. "Yeah sure, we can do Disney."

"Great, you get the movies and I'll bring the food", Lorelai says and finishes off Rory's coffee as she starts to get up. Her phone goes off and Luke gives her a dirty look, so she puts the cup down quickly and scrambles for the door. Rory laughs to herself as she watches her go past the window, but then she returns and bangs on the glass.

"Don't get Bambi," she yells. "Last time we watched that, you cried for a week!"

"I was five!!!", Rory yells back but Lorelai just waves her off and disappears around the corner.

Right on cue, Luke appears with the coffee pot. "Refill?"

"Definitely," she says and holds her cup up to him.

"So, you all done for this year?" Luke asks as he sets the cup back down in front of her.

She looks at him and smiles. "Yeah, all done."

"How did you do?"

"Okay, I'm pretty happy with myself."

"Any big plans for the summer?"

"Lots." She nods. "I'll sleep, and then I'll sleep and then I'll sleep some more for the first month, and the rest I'll figure out as I go along." She frowns. "I was thinking I'd try and get a job at the bookstore, I heard Andrew's looking for someone and I'll have a lot of spare time on my hands, so I might as well make some money off it." She smiles and winks at him. "Plus, I get to read anything in there."

Luke smiles and sets the coffee pot down, then turns to wipe down a table next to her.

"Have you read anything …interesting… lately?" he asks over his shoulder. There's a subtle change in his tone, but he doesn't look at her and she appreciates that. The question is the first reference he's ever made to that night, and she flinches a little but brushes it off quickly.

She wraps he fingers around her coffee. "Yeah, there were a few books." He turns around and their eyes meet. "I'm fine," she says and smiles.

"Yeah," he nods, and for a moment, he hesitates and she thinks he'll say something else, but then he just takes the coffee pot and walks away.

A week goes by and a new routine develops; she sleeps in, then she goes to the bookstore and works for a few hours. She meets Lorelai for lunch at the diner, then goes back to the bookstore again. After she's done for the day, she walks around town and settles in different places to read or write long letters to Lane, once again shipped to Korea and cut off from any means of electronical communication, although she avoids some particular benches and never sets foot on the bridge in the park. Evenings are for movies and junk food, town meetings and events. And the nights, nights are for thoughts of Jess.

It's become such a natural and constant thing, this ritual she goes through every night, that it is now as impossible to skip or forget as it would be to forget or skip brushing her teeth. She curls in her bed, pulls his shirt out from under her pillow and lays it next to her head. As she stares at it and inhales the vague scent of him that lingers there, she waits for the questions to come, the whys and what-ifs, and she offers the same answers every time, none of which sound right and none of which help at all. It's a vicious circle but she goes through it diligently, always hoping that she might realize something new, something she'd missed before, something that will help her understand why she just can't let him go. Usually, it ends there and she drifts off to sleep, but sometimes, her thoughts run wild and she imagines him coming back, she imagines just seeing him one day, somewhere, unexpectedly, and her heart always flies out to this image of him, but stalls just as it's about to reach him and her mind goes blank. She can never make that final step that would take her to him, that would bring her close enough to feel or touch him, she can never cross that line that would make him real, not even in her own mind.


	10. Building And Burning Down Love

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them . No copyright infringement intended.

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Hello all,  
I'm going out of town for a week, so I'm updating with two chapters tonight because there will be no more updates untill I come home. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the story and thank you again for reading and for the reviews.

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_Mood music: Where The Streets Have No Name, U2_

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**10. Building And Burning Down Love**

He's picked up two more postcards since Chicago, and he's now slowly turning the display and choosing the third as he waits for his train to pull in. He's given up on buses since the break-down in Wyoming, and he's grown to like the privacy the trains provide, especially the older ones that have compartments that are nearly always empty. He hears the train coming and he turns the display one more time. He picks one, puts the change away and walks out on the platform.

The train is old and there's plenty of compartments to choose from; he finds one he likes and settles by the window. There's a short wait but soon, the lights outside start moving and after a few minutes, they disappear; there's just darkness outside the window and his own reflection staring back at him from the glass.

Now that he's on his way, he lets himself think about where he's going, because unlike every other one so far, this journey has a destination, a very precise destination with a clear purpose behind it. There's just a few more pages left in the black notebook, and just one more ghost to lay to rest, but there's only one place where he can do that, and when he finally decided to return there, he realized he actually always knew that he would. From the moment he left California, that's where he's been heading and when he looks back on the trail he made across the country over the last months, it's a line that curves back to where it all started. He opens the front pocket on his back-pack, and takes out the postcards – there are seventeen. There would be no more, and he goes through them slowly, remembering all these places and thinking how they've changed him, how all those nameless streets, dead-end jobs and sleepless nights helped shape and form him, and through torment and anguish, they somehow made him heal.

Lights appear on the horizon again, distant and hazy; they get closer and grow sharper, and he can soon recognize the familiar lines that pierce the sky. A chill runs through him and his fists clench as he watches the city loom closer; he looks at the skyline and he knows that, once he does what he came here to do, he will never come back again.

The breaks screech and the train jerks to a stop. He takes a deep breath and zips up his jacket, gathers his backpack and slowly makes his way off the train and out of the station. As he walks down the street, the pulse of the city is familiar and comforting at first, but soon the thoughts of why he's here come back and send a chill down his spine that makes him flinch. He walks a few more blocks until he finds the right subway line, and waits for the train, with his fists clenched tight in his pockets. It arrives quickly and he boards it; the chills spread all over as he counts the stations, and as he reaches the one he needs, his legs feel like they're made of lead as he climbs the stairs to the street.

It's quiet and deserted; there are no cars and no people outside, which is not surprising because this is not a part of the city where it is a good idea to be out after dark, but he makes his way down the block anyway, and listens as his footsteps echo of the walls. He lifts his eyes and looks ahead; the alley he's looking for is just across the street, but somehow, his legs just won't move, like they refuse to take him there. He drops his back-pack and sits on the curb; fear washes over him with its icy fingers and he knows he won't be able to just walk over there.

He looks around and the surroundings are familiar, there's a whole childhood worth of memories here, and his heart clenches as hazy apparitions of two little boys run past him laughing. He shakes his head and wonders how he'll do this, but the answer doesn't come. He looks down the street, and a small glimmer of hope appears as he spots a liquor store, a neon sign that says OPEN flashing in the window. He gets up quickly and walks over; he's a minor, but at 3am in this part of town it won't matter as long as he has money. He walks in and says nothing, just runs his eyes down a row of bottles, and points. He places the money on the counter and waits.

The tattooed stranger behind the counter looks him over and takes the money. He puts the bottle in a paper bag and hands it to him – just as both of them are holding on to it, he says quietly: "I've got some other stuff you might like under the counter, all wrapped up and sterilized."

Jess looks up at him and his hand on the bottle shakes as the voice inside his head starts its familiar, seductive song. Every nerve in his body wakes and joins in, and he can feel himself break out in cold sweat. He grips the paper-bag tighter and stares into the stranger's eyes. "No thanks", he says quietly and pulls the bag from his fingers. "I'm good."

He sits at the curb until the bottle is half empty and his hands don't shake anymore. His mind is slightly hazy – not enough to cloud his judgment or make him forget why he's here, but the alcohol provides just enough of a push to get him back on his feet and steer him towards the alley. He moves slowly and purposefully as he enters it, one step at the time, bracing himself for the moment when the memories will kick in; this time, he's determined to face them once they arrive.

It happens when he turns the corner around the building, and although he's been waiting for them, they still catch him off guard; he remembers the sounds and the frantic rhythm of running footsteps and his heart pounding in his ears, because he knows they're running for their lives. He remembers looking behind and seeing no-one, and he remembers the relief that swept over him so prematurely. He remembers laughing and yelling forward that it's ok as he turned this corner that he's turning now, and then slow motion kicks in as he remembers the knife hitting his chest, then sliding down his skin and going into his flesh. He also remembers he didn't feel it at all because his eyes immediately went to the boy on the ground, silent and motionless, and he remembers watching the big red stain spread over the boy's chest, the same boy that had been running in front of him just moments ago, his eyes now empty and lifeless, staring at the sky overhead. He remembers falling to the ground slowly, and staring at that red stain spread and slowly form a puddle on the ground, and he remembers that he stared at it for what seemed like ages before everything mercifully faded to black and he didn't have to look at it anymore.

He's leaning against the wall and he slowly slides down, his eyes locked on that spot on the ground. There's nothing there, but his mind projects the past scene so clearly and vividly that he can see every detail as he saw it then – the pool of blood and his best friend in it, forever still and silent, with his eyes open and staring into space, with a look of surprise on his face that will never change again. He stares at this scene that he's been running from for years, he stares at it now for the first time in its entirety, with eyes wide open and without shutting it out, and he feels his insides shatter to pieces, like glass breaking from an explosion so loud and powerful that it leaves nothing whole in its wake. He doesn't know how long he sits there, but gradually, the image blurs and begins to fade to grey and he realizes that it's tears; relief washes over him when he recognizes them, when he realizes that they've finally come and that he can cry now. He cries like a child, like he should have cried years ago but couldn't, he cries for his friend and for himself, for their mistakes and for his guilt, for the memories and for joy that he can sit here now and cry this way. At some point, he remembers the bottle and finds it with shaking hands, and he waits for morning in that alley, curled up on the cold concrete, drunk and shivering, but blissfully free.

...............

He doesn't really remember leaving or getting to where he sits now, but he is very aware that his head hurts so badly that he wouldn't be surprised if it split open. The sun is high overhead and the day is bright; the brightness bothers his eyes but there is a powerful urge inside to write and so he does, glancing up and looking over the river in front of him from time to time. He wants a coffee so badly like he's never wanted anything else in his life, but this is more important, so he sticks with it even though his hand is so unsteady that he doubts he will ever be able to decipher what he's written if he ever chooses to look at it again. But still he writes, because the need is there and he feels it's time to finish this journey and put it behind him. Curiously, the last sentence falls on the last page, and as he stares at it, he fights the urge to print _the end _underneath; he gives it one last look and then closes the notebook and puts it in his backpack.

He leans his head back and closes his eyes; he takes a few deep breaths and the air is so sweet, it smells of summer and it smells of future. Instantly, his mind flies to her and she fills his heart so completely that it feels like it will explode out of his chest; in the back of his mind, the music starts again and he wonders why it's always this song that is the soundtrack to his thoughts of her. He suddenly remembers there's one more book left in his backpack, the book that he always carries with him because it's the one that made him love books in general, the first book that touched his heart and the one book she asked for and he never gave it to her. He opens the backpack again and it takes a while to find it because it's buried deep down under everything else. It old and messy, held together with scotch tape and he looks at it lovingly, wondering if he can actually part with it after so many years. He remembers the last time he opened it, on his way to California, when he was searching for something in there to help him along the road he had chosen. He remembers the passage he found and underlined then, and somehow, it makes even more sense now, as he rereads it and feels a new sense of closure settle over him.

He roams over the pages, and as always, he thinks about why he loves it so much – inside it, there is calmness and curiosity, there's wisdom and mistakes, there's a beauty and a sense of belonging that he has yet to experience and there's so much love hidden between the lines that it doesn't need to be expressed in words. _It's like her_, his heart says and for the first time, the feeling doesn't scare him and he doesn't shy away or run from it, he just accepts it and admits to himself it's true, like it has been true always, maybe from the first time he laid his eyes on her, heard her voice and saw her smile. Now that he's made peace with all his ghosts, he feels free and honest for the first time in years and it is suddenly a simple thing to recognize, this flame in his heart, and it's easy to call it what it is. He knows now he loves her, and it is a truth that fills him with such joy that for a while he just sits there and lets it wash over him like warm waves.

He looks at the book again, runs his hand over the cover and smiles. He takes a pencil and opens the first page. He wants to write something meaningful, something that is worthy of this book and of her, something that will show, even slightly, what he is feeling right now, but then his smile fades and he remembers all the postcards and the months that stand between them, and reality bites hard. She's probably moved so far past him that suddenly it all seems naïve and ridiculous, and he wonders what he was thinking when he sent all those books. He doesn't really know, it was an impulse with the first one and the impulse would return every time he finished another; vaguely, he knows that he was reaching out to her but now he thinks it was too little and much too late. He left, and said nothing; he just disappeared, and for a moment he remembers the last time he saw her and his blood runs cold and the pencil in his hand shakes. He wonders what he's doing and he wonders what comes next. He's done running and once he leaves this city, the next place where he lands is a place he is determined to stay.

He suddenly remembers Frank, telling him to go home; then he remembers Luke, asking him if he's coming back, and his heart clenches. The thought still scares him, but there's also an incredible yearning in his heart not to be alone anymore. He feels he's had enough solitude to last him a lifetime, and longingly, he thinks of Luke and the diner, and of the small everyday rituals, so comforting and unchanging, and for a moment it seems pointless to go anywhere else but home. Then he thinks of her, of seeing her again, but it seems so unreal that he can't really imagine it. It scares him to face her, to face the look in her eyes, and it's a curious thing that the very reason that he wants to go back so badly is also the only reason why he doesn't dare to do it.

The song is back and he looks at the book again, and suddenly he knows just what to write. He scribbles the lines down carefully and closes the cover. He takes one last look at the river and the skyline behind it, then gets up and finds the post office; after he's done there, he makes his way to the bus depot, unsure where he's going but certain he's leaving nonetheless, leaving this city and everything it stands for, leaving it all behind for good.

...............

She picks up the last book from the mailbox when she gets home from work, just like she picked up the first, but she doesn't know it's the last one, the same way she didn't know others would follow after the first one arrived. Dark clouds are forming overhead so she decided to come home and skip the usual wandering around town. When she holds the package in her hands, it somehow feels different, but she tells herself she's being ridiculous as she takes it inside and sets it on the coffee table. She goes into her room and changes her clothes, then looks for some food in the fridge but finds none. She opens up a cabinet, pulls out a bag of nachos and walks over to the sofa.

She rips the envelope and turns the book over, and her heart skips a beat; this book is different. It's old and ripped but taped together with care and affection, like it is a treasure that can only be found once in a lifetime. She can tell he's had it for a long time, a thought that is confirmed when she opens the cover and finds the words _Property of Jess Mariano_ scribbled neatly in the top right corner, in a child-like version of the handwriting she knows so well. The date under it is five years ago. Yes, this book is different; she's asked him for it before but he's never given it to her. She's surprised that he sent it now, but the very moment she registers the thought, her blood runs cold and she knows there will be no more books, because this is the book, this is the one that means the most to him. Her hands shake as she flips the pages, looking for that passage she once heard him quote; she knows she will find it because she's sure it's underlined – it has to be, he knows it by heart – and although he often puts notes in the margins, he only underlines things that really touch him. She doesn't have to look for long, because there's just one passage that's underlined, but curiously, it's not the one she expects to find.

"…_when in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them. Circumstances can have a motive force by which they bring about events without aid of human imagination or apprehension. On such occasions you yourself keep in touch with what is going on by attentively following it from moment to moment, like a blind person who is being led, and who places one foot in front of the other cautiously but unwittingly. Things are happening to you, and you feel them happening, but except for this one fact, you have no connection with them, and no key to the cause and meaning of them. The performing wild animals in a circus go through their programme, I believe, in that same way. Those who have been through such events, can, in a way, say that they have been through death, a passage outside the range of imagination, but within the range of experience."_

As she reads it, he can hear him say the lines in her head and suddenly she feels like there's more to this passage than she can understand, like there's a message hidden in there that lingers just out of her reach. She closes the book again and runs her palm over the cover, tracing the words _Out of Africa_ with her fingers, before she leans back into the sofa and starts reading.

She soon realizes that this book is not a page-turner; its flow is slow and subtle, its wisdom reserved and subdued, but there's more love in it than in any other book she's read before. She takes her time with it and carries it everywhere with her, returning to it in every spare moment – it somehow seems it is meant to be read this way, in little snippets, because it's made up of stories that are scattered pieces of one experience. She reads it slowly and carefully, moment after moment, day after day, until comes one afternoon in the park that finds her lying in the grass as she turns the last page. She lays the book down on her stomach and closes her eyes, understanding perfectly why he loves this book, and with a soft pang of regret, she feels the movie she loved so dearly slowly diminish in her heart.

Wishing it wasn't over yet, she picks up the book again, and turns the last page over. She's not expecting to find anything, she does it out of habit, and she's amazed to find almost a page-full of text there. She's so surprised she sits up, frowns at the page and blinks, as if to make sure the lines will still be there when she opens her eyes. The first thing she notices is how out of place they look, and it is only then that she realizes there was not one note scribbled in the margins of this book. There was no handwriting anywhere, except his name in the front, and she thinks how strange that is, both the absence of notes and the fact she hadn't even noticed that they were missing. She returns to the writing, and reads it slowly, her lips moving as she forms the words.

_Sometimes I'd wake up in the morning  
The gingerlady by my bed  
Covered in a cloak of silence,  
I hear you talking in my head.  
I'm not singing for the future,  
I'm not dreaming of the past,  
I'm not talking of the first time  
I never think about the last._

_Now the song is nearly over,_  
_We may never find out what it means;_  
_Still, there's a light I hold before me,_  
_You're the measure of my dreams,_  
_The measure of my dreams…_

There's a date under the text; it's two weeks ago, and the words New York are scribbled next to it.

She takes in the words, takes in their meaning, but can't wrap her mind around them, can't understand what they're doing there and doesn't know how to deal with them. Her hearts beats wildly in her throat and suddenly, she feels something breaking inside her again, feels this fine balance she has managed to build in the past months shatter, and as she hears a distant roll of thunder over her head, she's grateful for the excuse to shove the book into her bag, jump up and run as the rain comes down abruptly. She runs all the way home, she runs from herself and she runs from him, but mostly, she just runs from those lines she just read.

As she runs, she hates him for the first time. She hates him with such passion that it frightens her. She hates him for leaving, she hates him for breaking her, she hates him for making her reinvent herself but she hates him most for those lines he wrote and for the fact it took so little effort, just those few lines, to break her all over again and to turn this inner peace that took her months to create into sheer chaos again. _You can't do this to me_, _I won't let you do this to me again_, she wants to scream, and she feels she'll choke on the words if she doesn't let them out, but when she opens her mouth, there's only sobs and she realizes she's crying.

She slams the door behind her and drips all over the floor as she walks to the closet in the hallway and pulls out a shoebox. She opens it and flips it over, and the shoes tumble down to the floor with soft thuds. She shuts the closet door and walks to her bedroom, leaving wet footsteps behind, but she couldn't care less. Her heart is pounding in her ears and she thinks her head will split open; her hands shake violently as she places the shoe box on her bed. She throws her pillow away, grabs the t-shirt and shoves it into the box. She walks over to the shelf and reaches for the books, and one by one, they seem to burn her fingers as she throws them into the box as well. She turns to her bag and takes out the last one, and suddenly she remembers how peaceful and happy it's made her this afternoon but the feeling is so far removed from what's inside of her now that it feels like it happened to someone else. She gives it one more bitter glance and throws it in the box with the others. She grabs the box and marches into the hallway and out of the house; she opens the trash can and shoves the box inside, slamming the lid over it before she returns to the house.

She feels an enormous sense of relief now that she can't see the box anymore, so she sits on the bed and dries her eyes. She waits for the pounding in her ears to subside and for her breathing to slow. She knows it's over, she's not letting herself go through it all again, she won't let him hurt her anymore, it's not worth it; this ghost that lives inside her head is just not worth all that pain. The change she feels is amazing and she can't believe how quickly love can turn to hate, and how easily the feelings shift completely. What was sweet is bitter now; what was gentle is now harsh, and curiously, she finds it is much easier to hate him than it was to love him.

............

As Lorelai pulls into the driveway that evening, she collects several empty paper cups and take-out boxes from the car and takes them over to the trash. She lifts the lid and as she shoves them in, the top of a box inside the can rips, and there are books inside. She frowns and can't make sense of it, so she drops the handful of garbage from the car on the ground, and pulls the box out. Books are sacred in the Gilmore household and finding them in the trash is unimaginable. For a moment she thinks her eyes are playing tricks on her so she reaches for one and opens it, and suddenly it makes sense as she makes out the letters in the moonlight - _Property of Jess Mariano._ She shakes her head sadly and casts an anxious glance towards the house before she takes the box to the car and puts it in the trunk, throwing a blanket over it. She picks up the paper cups and take-out boxes that she dropped earlier, pushes them into the can and puts the lid on. She enters the house slowly and isn't surprised to find Rory in her bed, pretending to sleep. She closes Rory's door gently, shuts off the lights downstairs and walks to her room, truly wishing for the first time that Jess would come back.


	11. The Darkness Within

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them . No copyright infringement intended.

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_Mood music: Put Your Lights On, Santana feat. Everlast_

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**11. The Darkness Within**

"_Hey," she says as she walks into the diner and navigates between the boxes that are scattered everywhere. A week ago, Luke decided to re-tile the floor, but at the moment, only Jess is there, hammering away at the old tiles. He stands up and lays down the hammer, taking the gloves off his hands as he watches her approach._

"_Hey," he smiles and kisses her, but as he tries to pull her closer, she backs away, sets her backpack on the nearest table, and starts digging through it._

"_I have a present for you," she smiles brightly over her shoulder as she pulls books and binders from the backpack and sets them on the table. "I took me forever to find it, I had to go to a thousand stores, and I finally thought I'd just have to order it online, but then Paris told me about this one place in Hartford, and there it was." She turns around and holds out a paper bag to him, smiling brightly. "So, here you go!"_

_He takes it and smiles at her. "What's the occasion?"_

_She shrugs. "There isn't one. It's just something that I thought you could use."_

"_Right now, I could really use a pneumatic drill, but I doubt you've managed to fit that in here," he smirks._

_She rolls her eyes at him. "Just open it."_

_He opens the bag and pulls out a thick notebook. Its covers are black and the material they're made of is peculiar and unfamiliar to him. The pages are kind of creamy in color, and the notebook is held together by and elastic band. He turns it over a few times and notices there's an expandable pocket inside the rear cover and a ribbon bookmark sticking out. He looks at her, and it seems to him that she's overly excited about this – it's just a notebook. It's different than a typical notebook, there's an air of purpose about it, but it's still just a notebook, and he can't really figure out why she's gone through so much trouble to find it, or why she's beaming at him now._

_Still, it's a gift; she gave it to him and that makes it precious, although he has no idea why she thought he could use something like this._

_He takes a step closer and kisses her, smiling. "Thanks," he says. "It's great."_

_Her face drops and her smile disappears, and he mentally kicks himself for not showing more enthusiasm, but then she suddenly smiles again and takes the notebook from him._

"_You've never seen this before, have you?" She smiles brighter. _

_He frowns and now he knows he must be missing something. "No," he says. "Should I have?"_

_She shrugs. "I don't know, but it's pretty cool." She lifts it up and turns it over in her hands. "It's called Moleskine, and there are a lot of different types of it – ruled, square, blank… They were very popular in Europe in the 19__th__ and 20__th__ century, especially in France. Many avant-garde artists and writers who used to paint or write outdoors used them – like Oscar Wilde, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse…" She saves the best for last. "Hemingway too."_

_He looks interested now. "That is pretty cool," he admits and takes it from her, but he frowns again. "But I still don't know why you thought I could use this."_

"_Ah, well..", she gives him a smug look and sits on the table behind her, "I figured you should have something that will keep all your scribbles in one place." He looks at her blankly and she rolls her eyes. "Come on, Jess, you're always writing. Your pockets are full of little scraps of paper with scribbles on them, and I've seen you squeeze so much text into a book margin that it could fill several pages of any notebook."_

_He shrugs. "So what?"_

_She gives him an exasperated look. "Well, maybe you should try putting it all in one place. Clearly, you have something to say, maybe you should just, you know, try writing it all down. For real. With a beginning, a middle and an end." She smiles at him and strokes the side of his face. "You know, like an actual book. Or a novel, if you like."_

_He stares at her like she just suggested he runs naked through Stars Hollow. "A book?" The idea seems so ridiculous to him that he bursts out laughing. "You're insane." He puts the notebook on the table and reaches for one of the boxes on the floor, and he's still laughing as he hauls it across the room._

_Slightly dejected, she frowns at him. "Why is that so funny?"_

_He sets the box down and looks at her. "Come on, Rory, I can't write a book!"_

"_Why not?"_

"_Because, I just can't, it's not something that anyone can do."_

"_I know that, but I'm pretty sure that you could do it."_

_He looks agitated. "Why? Why on earth would you think that I could write a book?!"_

_His tone is jaded and cynical; it makes her angry and she bites back. "Why on earth are you so sure that you couldn't?" She shakes her head. "Why are you always so quick to decide that you can't do something?"_

_He throws his hands up in frustration and his voice raises a few notches. "Why are you always trying to make me do something? I don't need you to find a purpose for my life! I'm not even sure I want one!"_

_They stand on the opposite sides of the room, glaring at each other. She gives in first, as she always does, and she sighs and looks away._

"_It is just a notebook, Jess", she says quietly._

_Instantly, he feels guilty and hates himself for being so proud, so stubborn and so unable to say he's sorry. She gives him a sad look as she pulls on her jacket and walks out of the diner, and he stands there, frozen, as he watches her open her umbrella and disappear over the square. She's never done this before, she's never just walked out on him like this, without a word, with that sad little smile and suddenly he's paralyzed by fear, its icy fingers crawling over his skin. Precious moments go by as he just stands there and hates himself, before he gets it together and goes after her. He catches up to her just as she's walking up the stairs to her porch; when he calls out to her, she turns and her lips curve up slightly. His heart steadies a little as he notices this, and he slowly walks up the stairs and smiles back._

"_You're soaked," she says. "You shouldn't run around in the rain."_

_He steps under the porch and shakes his head; little drops of rain land on her face. "I didn't plan on it," he says. "It was a spur-of-a-moment decision."_

_She nods her head. "It was the right decision." She smiles at him again. "Come on, I'll find you a shirt."_

_He's so relieved that everything's back to normal and at the same time, the fear that washed over him just minutes ago is still fresh in his mind, and as soon as they walk into the house he backs her up against the wall and kisses her like there is no tomorrow. He catches her of guard at first, but her hands quickly find their way into his hair and she melts into him like she always does, and she knows there is nothing she couldn't forgive when he kisses her like this. His hands struggle with her jacket for a moment, but quickly they win and he opens it and pulls her closer and she can feel his wet shirt stick to her stomach as he laces his fingers with hers. She can hardly move now, but she doesn't want to move anyway, she just wants him to come closer and kiss harder. Like he's read her mind, he steps closer and leans into her completely; there's no space left between them now, and she can't help a small whimper of pleasure that escapes her, but as she lets it out, he pulls away slightly and breaks the kiss slowly, but stays where he is, leaning his forehead against hers, and tries to catch his breath._

_She senses something happened inside him that she doesn't understand, and should not ask about, so she just untangles her fingers from his and embraces him for a moment. Then she smiles against his lips. "Come on, we have to find you a dry shirt; and if you don't step back a little, I'll need a new one too."_

_He steps away and follows her into her bedroom, where she digs out a Metallica t-shirt from her closet and hands it to him. He raises his eyebrows at her. "Please tell me this isn't Dean's; I'd sooner walk through Stars Hollow stark naked than be caught wearing his clothes."_

_She throws him a reprimanding look as she walks out of the room. "It's my Dad's", she says and hangs up her jacket in the hallway. She walks back into the room just as he's pulling off his shirt; his back is to the door and for a moment she just stands there and watches the muscles on his back shift as his hands move, but she suddenly feels like she's peeping and so she clears her throat. He turns around just as he drops the wet shirt on the floor, and he watches her eyes travel over his stomach and up his chest, and it is such a searching, blazing look that it makes every hair on his arms stand up on end. As her eyes move up higher, a change comes over her face and there's pure horror in her eyes, and he remembers the scar. She hastily moves closer and touches it gently._

"_What's this?" she whispers, her eyes fixed on it._

"_It's nothing," he says indifferently, but his voice shakes a little and he hopes she didn't notice._

"_It looks like something to me," she says quietly and searches his face. It's unreadable, like it's carved in stone._

"_Well, it's still nothing." His voice is firm now, but he doesn't move, mainly because her hand is still on his chest, and as much as he dreads the questions, he enjoys the touch._

_She can tell he doesn't want to talk about it, but she's not ready to let it go. "How long have you had it?"_

_There's a beat of silence and he looks away. "A long time," he says curtly and reaches for the t-shirt on her bed, but she takes his hand and stops him. His eyes find hers in an instant, and she flinches at the darkness in them._

"_What happened? How did you get this?" she asks gently, and there's such tenderness in her voice that for a moment, he sincerely wishes he could tell her, but he can't, because he has yet to face it himself._

"_I can't talk about it, Rory", he grits through his teeth and reaches for the t-shirt again, shaking her hand from his arm. "I told you that already, so just let it go." He walks away from her._

"_Why do you always do this?" she asks and follows him. "Why can't you just talk to me?"_

"_There's nothing to talk about!" He's yelling now but she doesn't back away. "It has nothing to do with you, just let it go!"_

_She steps closer. "Every time we get to this point, every time I ask a question that has to do with your life before you came here, you do this, your face turns to stone and you just shut down."_

_He retreats again, but there's no place to go anymore because she follows, and now he's backed into a corner between her closet and the wall._

"_What is it that's back there, Jess? And why are you so scared of it?"_

_He feels trapped and his head is pounding, and he yells again. "Just don't go there, Rory! Why can't you just let it go?!"_

"_Because I can't! I can't do this anymore! I need to understand!" Now she's yelling too and tears are flying from her eyes. "Because when you give me this look, I feel I don't know who you are, and it scares me and it hurts me!" She catches her breath and wipes her eyes, and her tone drops down to a whisper again. "I want to know you, Jess; please, just let me know you…" _

_Her hand reaches out to him, but he flinches away abruptly; he runs his hands through his hair and over his face, then shakes his head and paces back and forth like a caged animal; then suddenly, his fists clench and he turns away from her and smashes his fist against the closet door so violently that it goes right through. The wood cracks with a piercing sound that is louder than an explosion._

_She watches it all happen in slow motion for a moment, like she's watching a movie or a show that she's far removed from, but as she registers the red drops on her carpet and follows them up to the blood on his hand, reality hits so hard that she winces uncontrollably and steps away from him, shaking and cold. He stares at his hand and he doesn't really see her retreat, but he senses the movement and looks at her, and the look on her face cuts through him worse than any knife ever could. His blood turns to ice and his heart stops, but his mind kicks into overtime, scrambling wildly to find a way to fix this somehow, to find words that will make that look on her face go away, that will stop her from retreating further until she eventually runs._

"_Rory…", he whispers. _

_She looks at him like she's never seen him before; she looks at him like he is a complete stranger to her and this stranger scares her. She shakes her head and steps away again._

"_Please…" He looks for them wildly but the words just don't come. "Please…" He steps closer to her, and his heart jumps because she doesn't move. She shivers and wraps her arms around herself, but she doesn't move, and she doesn't look at him._

"_I'm sorry." His voice is shaky and he steps closer again; he can touch her now but he doesn't; he knows that if he reaches for her now and she pulls away, his heart will break, so he just stands in front of her, frozen. "I'm sorry," he whispers again. "Please, just look at me…"_

_Her breath is shallow and broken, and for a moment that lasts a lifetime, she just stands still, shivering, before she finally looks up. She looks into his eyes and it takes her every emotion she has for him to manage that look, because she is terrified what she will find there; she's terrified of seeing the darkness and rage burn inside him again, but they're gone – there's just a chaotic mixture of desperation, remorse, sadness and regret, and the look he's giving her is so full of fear and silent pleading that she finally dares to breathe again._

_He sees the smallest change happen in her face as she looks at him; a sob tears out of his chest and his arms wrap around her quickly. He holds her close and his whole body shakes as he whispers in her ear and he tells her how sorry he is, over and over again. At first this outburst frightens her but as she feels him shake against her so uncontrollably, she wraps her arms around him as well and holds him tight, and she slowly understands that what just happened scared him more than it scared her. Somehow, the realization makes her stronger. She also realizes she's seen more of him in that violent gesture and this breaking apart that followed it than ever before. She just holds him tighter, waiting for the moment to pass, and when it does, she tangles her fingers in his hair and starts to kiss him gently._

_The kiss is somehow different than the kisses they've shared before; it's different for her because she feels clearly that he needs her for the first time. It's different for him because he senses how very close he came to losing her and the thought is unbearable, so he holds on to her like she'll disappear right in front of his eyes if he lets her go. He slowly stops shaking but suddenly there are tears, they just run down his face silently and as she gently traces them with her lips, he knows he can never let something like this happen again, he never wants to see that look of sheer terror in her eyes again. His heart clenches and a deadly chill spreads through him, because he knows there's only one way to make sure it doesn't. The thought brings such pain that he just hugs her harder and kisses her desperately because he knows he has to leave her, he knows he must take himself away until he deals with that darkness that lurks within, because if he doesn't, the next time it comes out, he might hurt her even worse than he already has._

_Suddenly, he knows this is goodbye, and every damn inside him breaks. He takes the kiss over completely and he wants her to remember this one, he wants her to remember it when he's gone and it becomes a fierce, blazing, possessive imprint that he wants to leave on her and he pours all of his feelings for her in it. He doesn't hold anything back but doesn't expect she'll do the same, and when she matches him breath for breath and grip for grip, a raw desire takes over and he reaches for her in places he's never dared go before but has dreamed about touching for months. Her skin is soft and yielding under his fingers, and soon her breath comes in little gasps and sweet sounds of pleasure, and it amazes him how completely she gives in and how unafraid she is of his desire for her, and for the first time, he lets himself think that maybe she wants him the same way he wants her. As the thought comes into his head, it's like a cold shower and he know he has to stop, he can't let them do this now because he knows she'll hate him for it tomorrow, she'll hate him for it once he's gone. His heart beating wildly, he slowly removes her hands from his belt and wraps them around his neck, gently cradling her in his arms as he kisses her softly and feels her heart beat against his chest. She settles against him easily and runs her hands over his chest as she catches her breath with conflicting feelings, half-frustrated that he's stopped and half-grateful that he did._

"_We can't do this now," he whispers as he runs his hands over her skin in lazy little circles; she only then realizes that they'd lost their shirts somewhere along the way and she's surprised how wonderfully natural and safe it feels to be cradled against him like this, with barely anything between them. She presses her face against his shoulder and nods._

"_I know," she says quietly and runs her hands down his back, hooking her fingers in the waistband of his jeans. "My mom will be home soon." She looks up at him and smiles, and the sad look she catches in his eyes before he smiles back somehow feels out of place._

"_Yeah," he nods, running his hands through her hair as he looks at her. There's something unsettling in his eyes and it worries her, but the look he's giving her is so gentle and sincere that her anxiety fades quickly. She pulls away from him slowly and finds her shirt; when she turns around, he's pulling on his own shirt, and it's the wet one he dropped on the floor earlier._

"_That's wet," she points and gives him a quizzical look._

_He shrugs. "I know, but it's still raining so it doesn't really matter." _

_He pulls her into his arms again. "I have to go," he whispers and strokes her face, but somehow he doesn't move and he stands there a long time, searching her face and tracing his fingers over it. He knows that in a moment or two he has to turn around and walk out that door; he has no idea when he'll walk back through them again, if ever, and he just can't make himself do it, but then he hears the front door slam and hears Lorelei yell hello, and it's like divine intervention. _

_He smiles at the small girl in his arms and kisses her softly. "Bye, Rory", he says and turns away from her, climbs out of the window and disappears in the rain. _


	12. Lights Are Shining Bright

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them . No copyright infringement intended.

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_Mood music: Patience, Guns N' Roses_

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**12. Lights Are Shining Bright**

Even though the blinds are closed, the lights are still on in the diner, and Jess leans against the tree and just looks at them for a while. It's late and the town is deserted, there's only the soft sound of crickets coming from the park, and he just stands there and takes in the surroundings.

He never really made a conscious decision to come back; he walked into the bus depot and bought the ticket automatically - it was like laughing when being tickled, or scratching when something itched – he just did it, without thinking, instinctively. Once the bus started moving, his mind finally started to work and slowly process all the implications and consequences, but somehow all he could really think about was that he was finally going home. Suddenly there were no doubts in his mind that there was no other place he should be going, and there were no thoughts past that, no thoughts of what it means to return, no thoughts of the mess that he knew he left there, no thoughts of Luke or Rory – there was nothing but a wonderful feeling of closure, of reaching the end of this long and winding road he'd been travelling. Now he's here and he's surprised how calm he feels, surprised that there's not even the smallest inkling to run, surprised how good it feels to just stand here and look at those lights and know he's arrived, regardless of what may happen when he walks into the diner.

He moves slowly and crosses the street, still looking at the lights; he reaches the door and the sign says _Closed._ He knows the door isn't locked, because Luke only locks up after he turns off the lights. Still, as he reaches for the door, there's a moment of hesitation and he feels his heart skip a beat; he takes a deep breath and pushes it open. There's a sound overhead that signals the door opening, and it startles him, but as he recognizes it, he just closes the door behind him and leans his back against the glass.

"We're closed!"comes Luke's voice from somewhere in the back and Jess knows he's probably in the storage room. He thinks that he should say something but suddenly can't find his voice, so he just lets his eyes roam over the familiar space, taking in all the details he remembers and amazed how utterly unchanged everything is. Only the tiles on the floor are new and suddenly there's a flashback of Rory, sitting on the table and smiling brightly, swinging her feet over the dust and hammers on the floor. He's completely unprepared for the image and it shakes him up; he wonders if she'd been in here today and looks around quickly, half-expecting to find signs of her presence. His mind still focused on her, it catches him by surprise when Luke appears in the doorway across the room, holding two jars of pickles.

There's a very loud silence as they look at each other; Luke's stare is firm and unreadable, and Jess cowers slightly under it. He straightens up and pushes his hands into his pockets, but doesn't look away.

"You're back," Luke says; it's not a question but a declaration of fact. He sets the jars on the counter and props himself against it, studying Jess's face. It is a very concentrated and searching look, but it is impossible to say what's going on behind it, and Jess feels very naked under it. He suddenly realizes it's his turn to say something.

"Yeah." The word comes out somewhat croaked and he clears his throat.

Luke nods his head but the look in his eyes doesn't change. "Are you staying?"

Jess shrugs. "That's the general idea", he says and pushes his hands deeper inside his pockets.

The look in Luke's eyes grows harder; he shakes his head and Jess suddenly feels himself break out in cold sweat at the gesture. Luke walks around the counter slowly and stands in front of him.

"No, Jess, no more general ideas." He crosses his arms on his chest. "You're either staying or you're not. You don't get to drop in, make a mess, and then run away again."

The glare continues but Jess returns it without flinching. "I'm done running," he says, and there's a long silence again.

Luke finally nods his head. "Good. Glad to hear it. But just so you know…" Luke leans in closer and stares him down with conviction, "…if you run again, I swear to you now, I'll find you and haul your ass back here so fast you won't know what hit you. Got it?"

Jess stares back into his eyes and there's determination there that he hasn't seen before. He nods his head. "Yeah, got it." There's another second of staring and then Luke steps away and returns to the counter and the pickles. He moves them aside and begins refilling the ketchup bottles. Jess stands there and watches him silently, not quite sure what do to with himself. He knows the worst is over but he still somehow can't move; he suddenly feels an enormous amount of guilt settle over him and there's an urge to say something, but he can't find the words. Eventually, Luke seems to sense this, and he puts the ketchup down and looks at him again.

"What's up, Jess? You look like you're having an aneurism." The look in his eyes is softer now, and there's a hint of a smile on his face, and Jess relaxes a little.

"An aneurism would be a significant improvement right now," he says and finally moves, walking over to the counter. He sits down, reaches for the ketchup and starts refilling the bottles, but soon he sets them aside and looks at Luke again, trying to form the words he needs to get out, but it seems like an impossible mission. Luke watches him torment himself for a while, but eventually grows tired of it.

"I get it, Jess. You're an idiot." He almost laughs at the expression on his nephew's face. "Hopefully, you'll grow out of it eventually." He shrugs. "For now, just the fact that you're back shows an unexpected intellectual break-through, and who knows, in time, there might be others." He gives Jess a pointed look and sighs. "But I'm not holding my breath."

Jess gives him an agitated look. "Not exactly the phrasing I'd have chosen, but..."

"… but it captures the gist, so let's just leave it at that," says Luke and smirks at him. "You want to eat something?" Jess shakes his head no. "Okay, then take your stuff upstairs, and good luck finding the sheets for your bed, because I have no idea where they are." Luke returns to the ketchup, but the bell sounds again - the door opens and Lorelai walks in.

"Any chance of getting a coffee? It's been one exhausting, freaky, weird Friday…", she says as she closes the door; she turns around and looks up just as Jess turns on the barstool. She stares at him for a minute and then continues, "…and it just crossed into a whole new dimension of ...well, unbeliavable, really." She walks to the counter slowly and settles on a barstool on the far end. "Hey, Jess." She looks at Luke. "Forget the coffee; is there any hard liquor around?"

Luke ignores the last question and slides a mug down to her, pointing to the coffee pot next to her elbow, then he gives her a pointed look. "Are you alone?"

She laughs. "Wow, didn't you hear what I just said? Freaky, weird Friday and so on? Crossed into unbeliavable?" She shakes her head. "Nope, not alone. Rory's parking the car."

Jess can feel her eyes on him, and he makes it a point to stare at the counter, but that doesn't help much now that it's clear that Rory will be walking through that door any minute. His heart beats so loudly in his ears that he's certain both Luke and Lorelai can hear it and for the second time in the last hour, he breaks out in cold sweat. He didn't think it would all happen so fast, he didn't know he would see her so soon, he hasn't had time to plan or prepare for it, and he's not ready. It suddenly occurs to him that he could just go upstairs, and it's like he's seen the light after the longest of tunnels.

"Hey Luke, I think I'm just going to take my stuff upstairs", he croaks out, but as he starts to move, Luke grabs him by the arm and it's like his grip is made of steel. "I thought you were done running", he says and leans in. "Just sit and face the music."

Lorelai pours her coffee. "This should be good," she sighs and wraps her fingers around the mug. Luke lets go of Jess and returns to the ketchup again, and it seems to Jess that the three of them sit there in silence for ages before he hears the door open and the bell sound again.

"Is there still coffee?" Rory asks breathlessly as she closes the door. There's just silence behind her; feeling something's not right, she turns around and instantly, she knows it's him; not just by sight, but by a combination of senses, all of which instinctively recognize him and there's that strange pull again, the one that always wakes inside her when she's close to him.

"Jess." The word comes out, but really, it's more of a breath, and she wants to bite her tongue for letting it escape, but it's too late, it's out there now. It works its magic and he turns around and looks at her.

Time stops and the world fades; there's just the two of them and the universe between them. He looks at her and thinks she's beautiful, much more beautiful than he remembers; a familiar fire spreads through him, and again, it amazes him how it always reaches places within him that he didn't even know existed. His mouth dries and his heart beats wildly in his ears, and he wonders how he ever found the strength to walk away from her, because he knows now he never wants to let her out of his sight again. He searches her face carefully, looking for hints of thoughts and feelings behind her eyes, but there's something alien there, something removed and distant, something he doesn't recognize. Her face tells a different story; she's pale and her features are somehow distorted and it takes him just a moment to realize it's pain, and to know that he put it there. He wishes with all his heart that they were alone and that he could say or do something to make it go away.

His eyes are dark but there's a familiar gentle look inside them that brings back memories of laughter and kissing; her heart skips a beat and her throat closes as they float around her head. It hasn't diminished, this twisted hold he has over her, it hasn't become any lesser over all that time and pain that stands between them, and it makes her want to scream. He looks the same, only thinner; for a fleeting moment she forgets it all and she just wants to walk over there and touch him, just to make sure he's really there, but she can't – she can't let herself do that, because if she touches him, it's over and she'll love him all over again, and she doesn't want to love him anymore. She doesn't want him to know she ever did, so she looks away from him, because he knows her too well and she's afraid that in a second, he'll see right through her.

Neither of them speak, and the silence stretches forever, with his eyes fixed on her and hers glued to the floor, until she feels her eyes burn and knows she can't take anymore; she knows he's watching because there's tingles running down her spine. Her eyes lift and find Lorelai's; there's a silent plea in the look she gives her mother before she turns and walks out of the diner. Lorelai sets her mug down and catches Luke's eye briefly as she slides down from her stool. She starts for the door, but on her way she stops next to Jess and lays her hand on his shoulder, squeezing it slightly, and it's only as she touches him that he looks away from the spot where Rory had stood. "It's good to have you back, Jess", she says simply and gives him a small smile before she walks out.

She finds Rory in the car around the corner, curled in the front seat, her hands wrapped around her knees; her eyes are dry but the look on her face is beyond description. Lorelai sits next to her and leans on the steering wheel; she studies her daughter's face for a minute before she gently tucks Rory's her hair behind her ear.

"Are you okay?" she asks quietly.

Rory shakes her head. "No." She looks out of the window. "I don't think I even remember what okay feels like."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Rory shakes her head again. "No, not right now." She looks at Lorelai sadly. "Can we just go home?"

"Sure," Lorelai nods and gives her a small smile.

They drive in silence, and it accompanies them into the house; in the hallway, Rory kisses her mother and retreats to her room, closing the door behind her. Sadly, Lorelai watches her go and her heart goes out to her, but she knows there's nothing she can do to help Rory with this, not until Rory is ready to talk about it and Lorelai knows it may take a while until she gets to that point. She turns off the lights and casts another glance at Rory's door before she slowly climbs the stairs to her bedroom.

…………..

A few streets away, Luke has given up on the ketchup and is watching Jess stare at the counter-top. After Lorelai walked out, he turned on his stool again and hung his head, and hasn't moved since. The scene is getting old and Luke walks over and leans on the counter opposite him.

"Jess, it's been twenty minutes, and I'm getting really tired of staring at you stare at that counter."

There's no response, and Luke scratches his head. "Come on, get your stuff, let's go upstairs and find you some sheets. It's getting late."

Again, there's no response, and no reaction whatsoever. Luke decides on a different approach and his tone is much softer when he speaks again.

"What did you think would happen? Did you think she would walk through that door and run into your arms?" It works instantly and Jess is looking at him now. Luke shakes his head. "You've been gone for months, Jess. It doesn't work that way."

Jess gives him an annoyed look. "Thanks for pointing out the obvious," he says but he still doesn't move.

"Any time. And here's another gem for you; sitting here, staring into space, feeling sorry for yourself, pining and moaning? Stupid and pointless, so get a grip and move it."

"I wasn't moaning!" Jess shoots back and gives him dirty look.

"Oh, sorry, my mistake – then it was just the sitting, staring, pining and feeling sorry for yourself? Because really, that's much better."

Jess rolls his eyes. "I forgot how sweet and lovable you are."

"Yeah, I missed your priceless personality and sunny disposition as well," Luke says as he walks over to the door and locks it. He turns off the lights and picks up Jess's backpack, then grabs Jess by his jacket and pulls him off the chair, steering him towards the stairs. "Come on, lover-boy, you can pine upstairs too, and I'm going to bed."

They climb up the stairs and walk into the apartment, and Jess stops and looks around, cataloguing the changes. There are none, except there are a few boxes and a pile of clean clothes on his bed. He loses track of Luke for a minute and it surprises him when he appears and shoves a pillow and some sheets into his arms, then walks into the kitchen.

"I thought you didn't know where to find these," he calls after Luke with a smirk.

Luke ignores the comment and points to the bed. "Just move the clothes to the sofa and put the boxes on the floor and you'll be fine."

Jess walks to the bed and sets the sheets and the pillow down; then he turns to Luke. "I think I'll have a shower first."

Luke shrugs. "Sure, whatever."

Jess starts for the bathroom, but stops half-way there and looks at Luke again. "Do you have a shirt I can borrow?" He looks away. "I'm kind of short on clean clothes."

For a moment, Luke is taken aback, but he recovers quickly and nods towards his bedroom. "Sure, help yourself." As he watches Jess return with a shirt and close the bathroom door behind him, for the first time he dares to imagine Jess's life in the last months; he wonders where he slept and what he ate, where he showered and what he did for money. His heart clenches and he's suddenly overwhelmed with guilt for making him leave and annoyed with himself for being so stupid to think Jess would just go back to his mother. He slowly walks over to Jess's bed and moves the clothes to the sofa and the boxes to the floor, then reaches for the sheets and spreads them over the bed. He pulls the pillow-case over the pillow and sets it down, then finds a blanket and spreads it over the sheets. He returns to the kitchen just as Jess comes out of the bathroom and walks over to the bed. He notices Luke's already set it up, but just as he opens his mouth, Luke runs the water at the sink and starts rinsing out some dishes. Jess just smiles to himself, turns the lamp on his nightstand off and crawls under the covers, and it feels good; it feels good to be in this room and in this bed, and it feels good to hear Luke stomping around the kitchen. He revels in the feeling for a moment, but it's a short moment because his mind soon goes to her and the heat that swallowed him earlier returns immediately; but then he remembers her face and the look in her eyes, and the heat is quickly replaced by frosty fingers of fear as he recalls the pain he saw there and wonders if she'll even give him the chance to try and drive it away.

He's so wrapped up in his own thoughts that it startles him when he opens his eyes and finds Luke sitting in the chair next to his bed, and he sits up with a jerk. He shakes his head and takes a breath. "What's up with the creeping? You almost gave me a heart attack!"

"Yeah, sorry about that." Luke looks at him for a moment, then scratches his head.

Jess waits for him to say something, but nothing happens. "I thought you wanted to go to bed," he says.

Luke nods. "I did. I just started thinking, and ..well..." He looks at Jess. "We need to talk."

Jess sighs and drops back into his pillow. "If this is going to be about school and a new set of rules, can it please wait until tomorrow?"

Luke looks startled, but he quickly shakes his head. "It's not about that." Jess sits up again and there's another silence, and just as he tries to think of something to say, Luke finally breaks it.

"I'm sorry I kicked you out, Jess." He says quietly. "I shouldn't have done that."

For a moment, Jess can't believe what he's hearing, and his mouth drops as the words echo in his head; he's so dumbstruck that he just stares at Luke and it takes him a small eternity to find his voice again.

"That's okay," he says and suddenly he feels guilty and ashamed. "You were right, I was an idiot." He shrugs his shoulders and looks away. "I'm hoping I'm somewhat less of an idiot now."

A smile crosses Luke's face but it fades quickly. "Still, you were just a kid who screwed up, and I handled it all wrong." He shakes his head. "I thought you'd just go back to New York. It never crossed my mind you'd go all the way to California, and then God knows where else from there."

Jess looks at him and the guilt hits harder when he recognizes the same feeling in Luke's eyes. "Luke, I'm fine. It wasn't that bad."

Luke nods. "Yeah, but still – I shouldn't have kicked you out."

There's another silence and Jess knows he can't let Luke beat himself up over this anymore, but that means he'll have to explain things he's rather not mention now that they're finally behind him. He sinks back into the pillows and runs his hands through his hair, so very unwilling to dig through the past again but at the same time aware he owes Luke at least that much.

"I didn't leave because you kicked me out. I knew I was leaving when I walked back in here that afternoon, long before we got into that fight." He can sense the unspoken question hang in the air, and he doesn't wait for Luke to ask it. "Stuff happened to me in New York before I came here, stuff that I couldn't face and didn't know how to deal with, so I just ignored it. But something happened that afternoon..." his eyes close and there's a flash of her face and the horror in it, and he cringes, "..that made me realize that I can't ignore it anymore, because…someone.. might get hurt if I didn't deal with it." He takes a deep breath, sits up and looks at Luke again. "That's why I left. To deal."

Luke looks at him and it is a probing look that searches his eyes and his face, but Jess has no problem holding it and no intention to look away, and so they gaze at each other for a long minute before Luke speaks again.

"And did you?", he asks. "Deal?" Jess just nods, and Luke continues. "It took you a long time."

Jess nods again. "You have no idea."

"You want to talk about it?"

"I just did," Jess shrugs and Luke knows there will be no specifics, but suddenly realizes he doesn't need them.

"Okay," he says and slowly gets up from the chair. He watches Jess sit there for another moment and then starts walking to his bedroom.

"Luke?"

He turns around; Jess is still sitting there, watching him walk away.

"Thanks," he says quietly. Luke smiles and walks into his bedroom, closing the door.

…………….

She lays in her bed and stares at the ceiling, trying to restore some order in her head. He's back, she repeats to herself for what feels like the hundredth time but she still can't wrap her head around it; it's like her brain has acknowledged the fact, but somehow lacks the capacity to process it. On the other hand, her heart has no such problems; it beats just as wildly now as it did when she stood in the diner earlier.

Unwillingly, she thinks about tomorrow, about seeing him again and talking to him, and at the same time, she's excited and scared to death of that conversation; just looking at him today for those few moments brought on so many conflicting feelings that she feels like she's split down the middle. There's one part of her that is wildly happy - the gentle look in his eyes was familiar and there was such longing in it, and as she remembers it, her heart beats faster and warmth spreads through her; but the other part of her screams for caution, warning her she's been down that road before and reminding her that if she takes it again, there are likely mountains of pain ahead. She knows she can't go there; she's ripped herself into pieces over him so many times in the last months that she's sure if she does it again, she won't be able to put herself back together.

She hugs her pillow closer when she feels the tears burn in her eyes, and again wishes he never left, wishes these past months never happened and she could just walk into Luke's in the morning and hold him close and feel his arms close around her. But he did leave and he destroyed it all and now that she's known that pain, now that she's seen how it can become the bigger part of her and render everything else insignificant, she can't let herself get torn by it again.

The tears are hot and salty, and as they carry her off to sleep, there's a shy, tiny voice in her head that whispers those lines he wrote in the book, those lines that had so much love in them that they broke her heart because she thought he wasn't coming back and at that time, they seemed cruel; but he's back now, the voice whispers, and those words, maybe they weren't cruel at all, maybe they were just honest.


	13. Words Often Don't Come Easy

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them . No copyright infringement intended.

* * *

_Mood music: You, Ten Sharp_

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**13. Words Often Don't Come Easy**

The sun is high overhead when Jess opens his eyes; he stays in bed for a while and looks out of the window at the blue sky and listens to the muffled voices that rise from the diner. He slept well and didn't dream, and for a moment, he feels like it's the first day of the rest of his life before he decides that's just corny and gets out of bed. He opens his backpack and pulls out his clothes, then hauls the pile into the bathroom, pushes it into the washer and runs the program. He moves to the kitchen and finds coffee there; he pours a cup and settles on the sofa, staring into the sky again.

He needs to find her. He needs to find her somewhere where there's just the two of them, and he needs to hear her talk, regardless of what she might say. He needs to look into her eyes and examine her face, and figure out her feelings somehow. He knows she's hurt, he saw that yesterday and he grows cold again as he remembers the pain he saw in her face; she's probably angry too, she might even hate him, but she's not indifferent and that gives him hope.

The door opens and Luke walks in, quietly at first but when he spots Jess awake on the sofa, his steps get heavier and he shuts the door.

"Hey," he says. "You sleep okay?"

"Yeah, I slept great. Didn't hear you stomping at all."

"That's amazing, considering I don't stomp anyway."

Jess nods. "Sure, you don't stomp. Those little clouds of dust just rise out of the carpet for the hell of it."

Luke ignores the comment and walks over to the desk. "So, what are you going to do today?"

Jess shrugs. "I don't know. Do you need help downstairs?"

"No, not really," Luke shakes his head as he digs through a pile of papers. "You just do your own thing for now, we'll have the pow-wow on future arrangements later."

"Okay," says Jess and gets up from the sofa. He finds the jeans he wore yesterday and pulls them on. "I think I'll just roam around town for a while."

Luke lets go of the papers and turns around. "Any particular sights you're planning to see?"

"Uhmm… no, not really." Jess looks at him, and there a little too much understanding in Luke's eyes. "Unless, you know, you want to point out a specific place I should go?"

Luke looks at him for a long moment and turns back to the desk. "She's got a job at the bookstore," he says over his shoulder.

Jess stares at his back. "Right." He nods. "That makes sense." He slowly walks into Luke's bedroom and finds another shirt in his closet. He pulls it on and starts for the door, but just as he opens it, Luke's voice breaks the silence again.

"You did a lot of damage there, Jess, so thread lightly." Jess swallows hard and closes the door behind him.

He leaves by the back door, not wanting to go through the staring festival in the diner. He knows there'll be rumors and gossip for a while, but he really couldn't care less. He feels at home here and the rest of the town will just have to deal with that. As he walks across the square, the windows of the bookstore appear between the trees, and his legs grow heavier and somehow reluctant to move; his heart beats louder and climbs higher in his throat with every step, and tingles run across his back. Fear slowly creeps into him and he stops and sinks into a bench; as he sits down, he suddenly realizes he's been holding his breath and he lets it out slowly. He looks at the bookstore again and his mouth dries as he sees her step into the window with her arms full of books; she sets them down and starts rearranging the shelves. Hypnotized, he watches every little move; the way she takes a book of the shelf, then wipes it off and lays it on the floor; the way she bends down to pick up another, and moves her hair off her face as she straightens up and places it on the shelf. It is a big shelf and a large pile of books, but he watches her intently until she puts them all away and to him, it seems like one short moment; he only snaps out of it when she steps out of the window into the store and he can't see her anymore. Still, he continues staring at the windows, thinking she might be back, but he only sees Andrew come out and walk down the street. She's alone in there now and he suddenly moves and crosses the street quickly. He doesn't hesitate at all once he reaches the door, he just walks in and closes the door behind him.

The bell sounds over his head, and it takes him a moment to adjust his eyes, because it's much darker in here than it is outside. There's a shelf in front of him; it blocks the counter and he can't see her, but he can hear her talk, and he realizes she's on the phone. He moves further into the store and looks around; it is familiar and he remembers spending a lot of time here, sitting on the floor in the back and looking through books. Out of habit, he moves to his usual spot and runs his fingers over the classics he knows so well as he listens to her talk in the background. His hand stops as it reaches a copy of Hemingway's _Snows of Kilimanjaro_; he knows this edition well and he smiles as he pulls the book out and flips the pages in search of a passage he loves. He finds it immediately and once again goes through the familiar words. _Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now._

She heard the bell go off and as soon as she's off the phone, she goes looking for the person who set it off, but she's in no way prepared for the scene she comes across when she goes round the last shelf, and she freezes instantly at the sight of Jess leaning against the wall, reading a book. He's completely lost in it and doesn't notice her at all; there's a habitual frown of concentration over his forehead and his lips move silently. It is such a familiar expression that it roots her to the spot, and even though everything inside her is urging her to stop, she can't take her eyes of him. Just as she begins to get a grip over herself again, he closes the book slowly and looks up, and suddenly, there's no place to run anymore as their eyes lock together.

"Hey," he says quietly.

She says nothing; she just leans against the shelf behind her and stares at him.

"This place still looks the same," he tries again and leaves her eyes for a moment as he looks around.

She still says nothing, but she can't make herself look away. She doesn't think she can move at all.

"It smells different, though" he smiles and his eyes settle on hers again.

She doesn't know if it's the smile or the look he gives her, but suddenly silent glaring seems ridiculous and she finds her voice again.

"It's the incense," she says and nods towards the counter. "Andrew has a new girlfriend and a whole new outlook on life."

He smiles again and her heart skips a beat. "Burning incense around all these books? "

She nods and shrugs her shoulders. "That's what I said, but he doesn't care."

He shakes his head. "It could turn into a very grim outlook very quickly."

Suddenly, she grows tired of this dance and tired of all the things that hang in the air, unspoken but present.

"What are you doing here, Jess?", she asks bluntly and crosses her arms on her chest.

He stiffens slightly but shrugs it off. "Nothing. Just wanted to say hi."

The look in her eyes grows colder and he looks away; her voice is hard when she speaks. "You've said hi."

"Yeah, I have. But you haven't." He looks back at her and it's a different look, there's fire in his eyes and it's hard to bear; she struggles with it for a moment but then she looks away and just stands there silently. He moves closer to her and she instantly tenses up, but he just puts the Hemingway he's holding back on the shelf and shoves his hands into his pockets.

"Is this how it's going to be?", he asks quietly and leans back against the wall, studying her face. "You won't even talk to me?"

Suddenly, she's angry and wants to hurt him; the impulse comes so unexpectedly that she just acts on it instinctively. "I've got nothing to say to you," she snaps and there's an enormous amount of satisfaction when she registers the fleeting look of pain in his eyes.

He takes a breath and covers it with a smile. "How about if I talk, and you just listen?"

She laughs, but it's a laugh that sounds strange even to her, and she shakes her head. "No, Jess. You should have talked before."

This time, the pain in his eyes shows plainly, but somehow, she finds no satisfaction in it anymore and for a moment, she wishes she could take the words back. Regret only lasts a second and then she quickly retreats into anger again because it's much easier and much less dangerous to feel. Scared of what he might say next and frightened that she'll lose her nerve, she straightens up and walks back to the counter with her heart beating wildly and her mouth dry. She grabs the mouse and begins clicking blindly, her eyes fixed on the monitor and she prays silently that he would just leave; when she hears the bell sound and the doors close, she sinks into the chair behind her and hides her face in her hands; breathing deeply, she fights an overwhelming urge to cry.

...................

Lorelei walks into the diner and elbows Kirk out of the way in a struggle to reach the one empty stool at the counter first. He gives her a dirty look, but retreats wordlessly when she glares at him; having won the stool, she plants herself on it and leans on the counter with her head in her hands.

"Tough morning?" Luke asks as he sets a mug and a coffee pot in front of her.

"Oh, don't even get me started, and it will only get worse from here," she says exasperatedly as she pours the coffee.

"You think you've had it bad?" He leans on the counter opposite her. "I literally had to wrestle Taylor out of here this morning when he showed up with a box load of historical Stars Hollow banners he wanted me to hang on the walls." He shakes his head. "I swear, that guy should be wrapped in a stray jacket and committed to a safe place with rubber walls and armed guards."

Lorelei gives him an annoyed look. "Oh come on Luke, kicking Taylor out of here doesn't constitute a bad day, it constitutes a Monday, or a Tuesday, or pretty much any day of the week."

Luke frowns at her, but before he can say anything, the door opens and Jess walks in; there's suddenly silence in the diner as everyone watches him cross the room. When he reaches the counter, he turns on his heel and glares around; heads quickly turn away and the chatter resumes.

"Hey Jess," Lorelei says as she watches him go round the counter and reach for an apron.

"Hey," he says glumly and he turns to Luke, pulling the apron over his head. "I need something to do."

Luke looks surprised, but recovers quickly. "Okay… There's a truckload of wood that needs to be taken to the cabin… and a dozen boxes in the storage that need unpacking." Jess starts for the door, but Luke grabs him by the arm. "Um, Jess – that's a girl's apron you just wrapped yourself in; Lane wore that when she worked here." Jess gives him a murderous look, and Luke lets go of him and throws his hands in the air. "I just thought you should know." The apron comes off and Jess disappears in the doorway.

"Wow, that look on his face really brings back memories," Lorelei says as she pours a second cup of coffee.

"Yeah, but as unbelievable as it sounds, it kind of makes me feel better to see it," Luke replies. "I was really starting to worry that this guy who walked in here yesterday wasn't really Jess but some … body-snatcher or something like that."

"Really? How come?"

Luke sets down a glass he was rinsing and props himself against the counter. "I don't know, it's weird, there's a lot of little things, but basically – he's just not angry anymore. Yesterday – and brace yourself for this one – we actually had a conversation in which he talked." He leans closer to her. "He actually talked, on his own, I didn't have to pry the words out of him, and when I asked questions, he answered. And I'm not talking your usual yes-no-maybe-leave-me-alone kind of thing, but actual sentences." He shakes his head. "It was the weirdest experience of my life, totally twilight zone."

Lorelei shrugs. "Well, maybe he's grown; maybe he figured out he was an idiot before, maybe something happened that changed him… whatever the reason, this new version sounds like an improvement from the old one, so just shut up and count your blessings."

Luke nods. "Yeah, I'm not complaining, it's just – weird."

"Did you know he was coming back?"

"No. I mean, he called me once and I kind of let him know he could if he wanted to, but I didn't know if he would." He shrugs. "I didn't really think he would."

"Really? I kind of always thought he would, but I wasn't sure until Rory told me about those books he sent." Lorelei shakes her head. "And now he's back, and pouring his heart out to you, and she just completely stops talking to me." She looks at her coffee and sighs. "You're right, it's twilight zone."

Luke looks at her for a moment. "I think he went to see her today. I'm guessing that's what that look earlier was about."

Lorelei nods bemusedly. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure she thinks she hates his guts right now." She looks up at him. "Those books he sent? I found them in the trash a couple of days ago. Rory has never thrown books away. She's never even let me give away any of her picture books; I still have the entire Disney collection boxed up in the garage."

Luke stares at her. "Wow, she must really hate him."

Lorelei shakes her head. "She doesn't hate him; she only thinks she does. She's angry and she's hurt, and I'm sure he wants to hate him, but she doesn't."

Luke shrugs. "Well, she doesn't love him either," he says and sets a plate of cheeseburger and fries in front of her.

Lorelei pours ketchup over her fries and says nothing.

..............

"I have pancakes!", Rory yells as she walks into the house that evening and kicks her shoes off. "And I have ice-cream and strawberries and those little nutty things we love so much, and I have chocolate in a jar!"

Lorelei runs down the stairs in her bathrobe. "Oh, you're a gift from heaven! Hand them over!" She takes the bags from Rory. "Okay, I'll set up and you go and change but be quick about it because I'm not making any guarantees this stuff will be here very long."

Rory runs into her room and runs back out in a minute, pulling her pajama bottoms on.

"What are we watching?", she asks breathlessly as she settles on the sofa and helps Lorelei unpack the bags.

Lorelei smiles widely and squints at her. "We're watching… your baby videos!!!"

Rory's face drops. "Oh God, again? It's not even my birthday!"

Lorelei looks confused. "What does your birthday have to do with it?"

"Well, nothing really, except that you usually pull them out and torment me with them around that time." She sighs. "But apparently, there's really no time of year that is safe anymore."

Lorelei laughs. "Relax, I'm just kidding. We're not watching your baby videos, I just wanted to see your face screw up like that." Rory gives her an agitated look. "It's hilarious, I'll take a picture next time and you can see for yourself."

Rory throws a pillow at her. "So, are you going to tell me what we're watching?"

"A Monty Python marathon starts in a bit," Lorelei smiles smugly.

"You're kidding?" Rory says and her eyes pop out of her head.

"Nope, it goes on all night. We can sit here until tomorrow morning and then just stagger off to work like two zombies." She shrugs. "We'll just have to get an early start and stop by Luke's to chug down a pot of coffee each." She casts a sideways glance at Rory. "Speaking of which, you didn't show up for lunch today. How come?"

Rory shrugs but doesn't look at her. "I wasn't hungry."

"Really?" Lorelei looks at her quizzically. "What did you eat?"

"Just stuff. I went into Doose's and bought a salad."

"You survived the whole day on a salad?"

Rory nods. "Yeah, and it was good, so just make peace with that."

Lorelei shrugs. "Okay." She steals another glance at Rory and makes an innocent face. "Are you coming to lunch tomorrow or are these salads a permanent thing now?"

"I don't know." Rory shrugs. "Maybe. I'll see what I feel like eating."

"Right," Lorelei nods. "You do know there are salads at Luke's too, right?"

Rory gives her a warning look but says nothing. Lorelei sets her plate down on the coffee table, takes a deep breath and looks at her daughter. "Rory, have you seen Jess today?"

Rory looks away and busies herself with another pancake. "I don't want to talk about it."

Lorelei shrugs. "Fine. So that's your plan, to avoid him and everything relating to him all together?" She shakes her head. "Honey, this town is much too small for that."

Rory says nothing and stares into her plate stubbornly.

"Rory, he's back and you have to deal with that somehow."

Rory shrugs. "I am dealing with it."

"Avoiding him is not dealing with it, avoiding him is the very opposite of that, and it's called denial."

"You're making way too much of this," Rory snaps at her with a frown.

"I'm making too much of it?" Lorelei sighs exasperatedly. "Rory, a couple of weeks ago you were sitting on the floor in this very room crying your eyes out!"

"Yeah well, I'm done with that now so you can just forget about it," Rory snaps at her and turns on the TV.

Lorelei studies her face as she looks at the screen. "Oh, I get it." She nods her head slowly. "You don't care anymore, right?"

Rory gives her a determined look. "Right. I really don't care anymore."

"Since when?", Lorelei asks quietly.

Rory looks surprised. "You want me to pinpoint a moment?"

"I want you to be honest with yourself, because you can't just switch from heart-break to this kind of indifference in a blink of an eye, or in a week, or since yesterday – remember yesterday? When you walked into that diner and laid your eyes on Jess, there were a lot of things written in your face but indifference wasn't one of them."

Rory's face pales and she looks away, but she says nothing. Lorelei sighs and gives up. "Fine. Have it your way, but just don't lie to yourself because, trust me, that won't help. It'll just make whatever you're going through last longer and hurt more." She takes another pancake and reaches for the ice-cream, and for a while, there's just the sound of commercials on the TV in the room.

"I can't let him hurt me again, Mom", Rory says quietly.

Lorelei looks at her. "Maybe he won't."

Rory laughs, and it's the same bitter laughter that she gave Jess. "He's done it before."

Lorelei nods. "I know, but sometimes, you just have to risk it."

"No, you don't." Rory shakes her head with a stubborn look in her eyes. "You can also make sure it doesn't happen again."

Lorelei smiles sadly. "And be miserable in the process?" She sighs. "Honey, you'll have to see him every day – even if you never set your foot into Luke's again, you'll still see him. What are you going to do, remind yourself that you hate him now and cross the street?"

Rory jumps up from the couch and takes a few paces around the room before she stops in front of Lorelei again and glares at her. "What do you want me to do? Run into that diner and throw myself at him? I can't do that, I don't even want to do that. I don't even know him anymore!"

"Exactly," Lorelei smiles. "So just get to know him again. Talk to him."

Rory looks at her with horror in her eyes. "I can't just talk to him like nothing happened!"

Lorelei shrugs. "Then talk to him like something did."

"No!" Rory yells. "Don't you get it? If I let him talk, if I listen, if I give him just one chance to reach me, he will, and there's no going back anymore. And I can't let that happen, I can't get hurt like that again!" She returns to the sofa slowly and sits down. "I can't risk it, Mom, because if he leaves again…" She shakes her head and sighs. "If I fall apart like I did before, I'm scared that I won't be able to pick up the pieces, and he can do that so easily, he can break me like nothing else can."

Lorelei looks at her silently for a long time, and there's such fear in her daughter's eyes that she can't think of anything to say. She knows Rory's logic is backwards, she knows that this battle that she's weighing against herself is a lost cause, and she knows eventually she will lose it, but she also knows that Rory is not ready to hear or understand that right now, so she decides to let it go and give her time to realize it on her own.

On the other hand, the sheer force of these emotions that Rory has for Jess is disturbing on a whole other level. Lorelei remembers when they had dated; there was always some intangible energy in the room with them, like a secret that only the two of them understood, but somehow, the strength of this connection slipped by her. Only in the last few weeks, when she witnessed all the tears and recognized the pain in Rory, then later when she found those books, she started to fully appreciate how powerful these feelings are, and how much passion there is in them. As she searches her daughter's face, she finds them there again, only now, they are reflected in anger, and she understands that Rory has shifted into it because she feels safer there. She smiles on the inside as she remembers herself at Rory's age and she knows any advice she gives right now will be wasted, because some things can only be learned from experience, and although she wishes with all her heart she could somehow spare Rory this particular experience, she knows she can't.

"Okay," she says quietly. "This is your thing, you handle it your own way." She strokes Rory's hair gently. "But whenever you need me, I'll be right here, okay?"

"I know," Rory smiles. "Thanks."

"Okay, now let's get loaded on ice-cream and Monty Python," Lorelei says and turns the volume up.

..................

Night falls and Jess goes walking around. He's been restless ever since he walked out of the bookstore that morning and he spent the whole day looking for things to do so that he wouldn't have to think about what she said and the way she looked at him. He cleared the boxes from the storage, he worked in the diner for a while and stared down inquisitive glances, he unpacked his backpack and did another load of laundry, but eventually there was nothing left to do so he found a book and tried to read. He couldn't focus and after he reread the same passage for the fifth time, he gave up and left the apartment, finally ready to let his mind wander until it finds its way back to her.

He barely crosses the street and heads to the park, and a frame-by-frame replay begins in his head, and somehow, it's even more painful the second time around. He doesn't know what he expected would happen, but he wasn't ready for such distance in her posture and such resentment in her eyes, and it chills him to the core when he remembers it. There was not one warm feeling in her face the whole time he looked at her, just a whole world of defiance and rejection, but those weren't nearly as scathing as her words and her tone. He cringes as he remembers the dismissal in her voice when she refused to talk and the bitterness when she refused to listen, and the chill inside him spreads with a vengeance.

Haunted by regret and fear, he finds his way to the bridge and sits down slowly. He lets his feet dangle over the water and his eyes roam, but he doesn't really see anything except her face in his head; he lies back and studies it solemnly for a while before another image of her appears, smiling and sitting on this same bridge, and he cringes at the difference between the distant and guarded Rory from this morning and the happy girl that once smiled at him and kissed him in this very spot, and he wonders if she'll ever smile at him again.

For the first time, he thinks he might have lost her; he thinks maybe he caused such damage when he left that it can't be repaired or undone, and the thought sears through him with such force that it leaves him out of breath for a moment. He rejects it swiftly, not because of its painful implications that remain floating in his head, but because he sensed something within her that morning, something vague and intangible but nonetheless present, something that he didn't pick up on by sight or reason but by instinct. She was harsh and even cruel in what she said; she was far-off and restrained in the way she held herself, but it all seemed too pointed and over-pronounced, like she'd drawn a line between them that she would not cross out of uncertainty rather than out of resentment.

He closes his eyes and focuses on that tiny ray of light in the darkness; he hopes there's enough feelings left there somewhere, no matter how hidden and deeply buried they may be, that he can somehow reach her again.


	14. So Close But Still A World Away

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them. No copyright infringement intended.  
A big thank you goes out to everyone who reads, and a a giant thank you to those who have taken the time to review.

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_Mood music: Crazy For You, Madonna_

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**14. So Close But Still A World Away**

A few days go by and he doesn't come looking for her again. At first this makes her happy because she feels she's won somehow, but soon the feeling fades and she just feels empty and restless. She starts peering through the windows of the bookstore and looking for him; she keeps her eyes wide open when she walks around town, hoping she might spot him on the street somewhere. It's unclear to her what she will do if she does, but she watches out for him nonetheless. Mentally, she squirms over this sudden desire to see him, but she quickly rationalizes it as simple curiosity and nothing else; she's sure that once she does see him, the feeling will go away.

She gets lucky one morning as she walks over the square and she spots him as he exits the diner. She quickly steps behind the gazebo and watches him haul a pile of empty boxes around to the dumpster in the alley. He walks in the same lazy, casual way he always did, and watching him move strikes a familiar chord somewhere deep within her that makes her flush and skip a breath. She quickly turns around and nearly runs into the bookstore, shaken by the feeling and angry at herself for letting it shake her.

Curiously, this stolen glance doesn't make the desire to see him go away, it only makes it stronger, and she spends the morning tormenting herself over it. She knows there's one place she will surely find him, but she only has to think about walking into Luke's and her heart jumps into her throat. She reluctantly admits to herself that it bothers her that he's staying away, but she knows he will - not out of spite or insult, but because that's what she told him to do. If she wants to see him, she'll have to make the first move and she hates herself for wanting to make it.

Lunch approaches slowly and she thinks about going to the diner again; her heartbeat quickens as usual but this time she shrugs it off and finds resolve in resenting the fact that she's denying herself coffee and food she loves because of him. He's just not worth it. She builds on that resentment for a while and come noon, she marches out into the street and over to the diner, driven by spite and empty stomach, and comforted by the fact that Lorelai will be there and she won't have to talk to him at all.

She pushes the door open and her fool-proof scenario crumbles in pieces around her – the diner is packed, Lorelai is nowhere to be seen and there are no free tables, aside from the seats at the counter. However, fate grants her a small blessing – there's no Jess either.

For a moment she stands by the door, like a statue or a house-plant, unsure of her next move, but then Luke looks up and waves her over. Reluctantly, she walks to the counter and slides into an empty stool.

"Hey," Luke smiles and sets a coffee in front of her.

She looks up at him. "Hey," she says and somehow manages a smile in return.

"The usual?" he asks and she's grateful he doesn't mention the fact that she hasn't been here for days.

"Yeah, sure," she says but she can't help her eyes darting around him and towards the doorway behind, because she expects Jess to walk through it any minute and she needs to brace herself for that moment.

Luke notices she's fidgeting and scratches his head, trying to think of a way to let her know she can relax. "It's a madhouse in here today," he sighs. "A bus load of tourists landed in the square half an hour ago and I swear, they all ran straight in here." He rolls his eyes and steals a look at her. "And of course, Jess picks today to run off to Hartford," he adds matter-of-factly.

She looks up and the words fly out before she can stop them. "Jess isn't here?" She instantly regrets the question and blushes at the urgency with which it was delivered, but Luke pretends not to notice any of that.

"No," he shakes his head. "He went to the library."

"Oh," she says and lets out a breath. She picks up her coffee and rests her elbows on the counter. Luke smiles and hands her a newspaper, then leaves with the coffee pot.

She's only at page five when her lunch arrives, and she spreads the newspaper on the counter before her so she can read while she eats. She enjoys both her lunch and the fact that she's sitting here again; for the time being, Jess is far removed from her mind now that she knows he's not here. She finishes her lunch in peace and slowly walks back to the bookstore.

The afternoon fades away in brooding over the land-mine she sidestepped over lunch, but also in anxiety over the panic attack she had before she found out he wasn't there, and she decides that she can't live with the prospect of going through one of those every time she walks into Luke's. Reluctantly, she admits Lorelai was right – she has to talk to him, at least on a superficial level; once she sees him a few times and walks away in one piece, she's sure it will get easier, and she won't get so tied up in knots over it anymore – it's probably just a matter of adjustment anyway.

Once she's done with work that afternoon, she doesn't go straight home for the first time since he's been back; instead, she takes a book and tentatively wonders to the park, looking for a place in the sun. She reaches the bridge but there are too many memories there and once again, she avoids it and turns right, settling on the grass on the bank across from it. She likes this spot because it's secluded and has a beautiful view of the lake and the bridge, and it is surrounded by hibiscus bushes that provide privacy and block the path behind her. She opens the book and starts to read, although somehow it is not the usual comfortable and peaceful experience, but a struggle with every page – she can't focus and her mind drifts. She feels like she's not really here to read at all, the book is just an alibi while she waits for something else to happen, although she's not sure what it is she's waiting for and where this feeling comes from.

Soon enough, the answer to that question appears when she lifts her eyes again and spots Jess walking on the bridge. He sits down when he reaches the middle and she watches him across the water as he pulls a book from his pocket and settles to read. He looks small and peaceful, and she feels safe and unusually calm as she looks at him from this distance because he's too far away and there's no physical reaction to his presence; there's just curiosity and a soft yearning that she always felt for him and that she suspects she always will feel. She doesn't know how long she watches him turn the pages of his book, her own laying in her lap forgotten, as her mind goes round in circles, always asking the same painful questions - why he left the way he did, so abruptly and so silently, why he never called or wrote or explained, why he sent those books and finally, why he wrote what he wrote in that last one, after so many months of silence.

The church bell sounds and it makes him look up, and she knows he's seen her. She flinches, but he remains perfectly still, he just looks at her from across the water. He's too far away for her to see the expression on his face and he doesn't move at all, he just watches her silently and so she does the same. Many minutes drift by before he moves, and when he does, it's only to shift his position slightly – he lays the book on the bridge and hugs his knees, never taking his gaze away from her, and she would give anything to be able to crawl into his head right now and know what he's thinking.

He's thinking that he wants nothing more than to be able to stand up and walk over to where she's sitting, and see a smile light up her face as he approaches; he's thinking how absurd it is that she's just over there, so close and still a world away, so far out of reach that this small stretch of water between them feels like an ocean that is impossible to cross. He won't go to her again, not until she shows him that she wants him to, and so he just enjoys this unexpected moment that allows him to just look at her and enjoys the warmth that spreads through him because she hasn't left, because she doesn't move and because she's watching him too, small and still under the hibiscus bush.

The church bell sounds again; the shadows have grown longer in the last hour and unwillingly, Jess decides to leave, because it will be easier to walk away than to watch her do it. He also wants her to know that he's willing to give her all the space she wants and all the time she needs until she's ready to let him back into her life, in whatever capacity she sees fit. He waits for the last rays of sun to retreat from the lake and then he looks away from her slowly, gathers his book and walks away. She watches him go, and the soft ache in her heart grows as he disappears into the trees.

………………

Next morning, Rory wakes up to an empty house and Lorelai's note on the table which tells her she had to leave early to pick up some supplies for the inn. She gets dressed and walks into town; as soon as she reaches the square, she catches herself looking for him again and suddenly feels tired of this game of hide and seek. Before she makes a conscious decision to do it, her feet carry her towards Luke's on their own, and before her mind catches up, she's already half way there. As the diner grows closer, she briefly remembers the panic that overtook her yesterday when she walked in there, and she hesitates slightly, but there's a strong urge to just walk in and put all the hiding and searching for him behind her. She also wants to see him again, but she's not ready to admit that to herself yet; she has no idea what she's going to say to him if she finds him in there, but she doesn't let herself think about that. In reality, she doesn't know why she's doing this at all, and even though a thousand reasons why she shouldn't present themselves in quick succession, she ignores them all and pushes the door open.

It's early and there are a lot of coffee junkies in Stars Hollow, so the diner is packed. There are a few free tables, but she's alone and she walks to the counter out of habit; she's already sitting down before the thought strikes her that it would have been safer to sit at a table. She looks around quickly and spots Luke navigating around the room with his hands full of plates. Just as relief washes over her because Jess is nowhere to be seen and she turns back around on her stool, he steps through the doorway behind the counter. For a second, the world stands still and their eyes lock together, but the second passes and she looks down to the counter.

It is a dangerous, risky thing to be so close to him, she instantly remembers as her pulse quickens and her heart climbs into her throat; it is like tide that washes over her and threatens to knock her off her feet, and it always brings a senseless impulse to touch him. She hates that it is still so hard to fight this feeling, she resents that she has to concentrate so hard to put it out of her head and she hates that she's not sure she can look at him without having him see it all in her eyes.

Jess stops in mid-step when he sees her, but recovers quickly, although his heart skips a beat as he watches her retreat into herself and look away from him, but the fact remains that she is in here and it's a small comfort. He moves behind the counter and reaches for the coffee pot.

"Hey," he says and sets a mug in front of her. He pours the coffee and watches her reach for it.

"Thanks," she says quietly and wraps her fingers around the mug.

He looks around. "No Lorelai?"

Rory shrugs. "She started out early today, had to pick up some stuff on her way to work."

A man sits down on the far end of the counter and Jess walks over with the coffee pot and takes his order. He yells it toward the kitchen and returns to her, but he says nothing. He just starts clearing the dishes and waits for her to talk if she wants to.

"So, what are you reading?" she asks after a moment of silence. He gives her a confused look. "Yesterday, in the park – you had a book with you," she explains, but she also suddenly remembers the long hour they spent looking at each other and immediately regrets she asked.

He's surprised she mentions this, and he recognizes in her face that she's sorry she did; he remembers the way they stared at each other and understands why. "Farewell to arms", he says quickly, worried she'll stop talking now that the memory of yesterday hangs in the air.

"Again?" she says without thinking and there's surprise on her face. "I thought you went through Hemingway before."

"I did. But it's been a while and it just sort of landed in my hands yesterday, so…," he shrugs. "It's actually slightly different every time."

She nods but says nothing; a seat down the counter empties and he walks over to clear the plates. She steals a glance at him as he wipes the counter but quickly looks away again when he walks back.

"What are you reading?" he asks as he returns, hoping to keep the conversation going.

"Hesse", she says. "Steppenwolf."

He smiles. "That's a weird one."

She looks up at him and once again marvels at the fact that she rarely manages to pick up a book that he hasn't read before or at least known about. "I just started it yesterday," she says and waits for the analysis she knows is coming.

"I liked it the first time around, but didn't really get it completely until the second. It's a little twisted and seemed really depressing, but when I picked up on all the Freudian bits and pieces, I figured out it actually isn't." He shrugs. "It was a big hit in the sixties, the hippies loved it."

She didn't know this and now she's curious. "The hippies loved it? Why?"

He smiles. "Mainly because of all the drugs and sex that's in there; I guess it struck a chord. But if that's all they found in it, they grossly missed the point, because even though the whole thing resonates of an acid trip, it's just a means to an end." He shrugs. "Just wait and see what you make of it."

She just nods; Jess suddenly remembers he never took her order. "Do you want to eat something?"

"No," she shakes her head quickly and glances at her watch. "I have to get going, I'll be late for work." She slides off the chair and gathers her bag. As she gets ready to leave, she looks up at him and there's a beat of silence before she speaks again. "I'll see you around," she says and walks away; he watches her go and wonders if she'll be back for lunch.

.......................

He spends the morning in the diner, and he falls into the work routine easily. There is the usual procession of familiar faces and familiar things that need to be done, and he goes through the motions mechanically, with his mind elsewhere. He mostly thinks about her again and the way she watched him yesterday by the lake and then came into the diner this morning after she hasn't set foot in it for almost a week, and he's relieved and wildly happy that she did. He thinks about the way her hands wrapped around the coffee mug and for a silly moment, he wishes he could turn into one and have her touch him. He tries to remember her touch and the feel of her skin against his, and although the thought is gentle and soft, it brings a flashback of kisses against a hallway wall and there's nothing gentle in the flame that ignites within him at the memory. He shakes it off quickly because it is the wrong time and place, but his skin still bristles for a long while as tries to focus on something else. Right on cue, Luke walks over and dumps a load of plates into the sink.

"The bloody delivery guy is stuck in Hartford with a busted carburetor, can you believe that?" Luke shakes his head. "I swear, it's always something – if it's not Taylor with one of his hare-brained schemes, then it's Kirk and his antics; if it's not Kirk, then it's a busted toilet, and when it's not the toilet, then it's the bloody delivery guy." He takes of his apron and looks for his truck keys. "Are you going to be ok here on your own? I've got to go to Hartford and find that idiot and our delivery."

"Oh, I'll be fine, but you should take a chill pill or you'll have a coronary," Jess says and smirks at him.

"Ha, ha, I forgot how funny you are… try not to blow anything up or burn anything down, okay? Oh, and yeah? Remember that pile of wood in the truck that I asked, then begged you to take to the cabin? Funnily, enough, it's still sitting in the truck!" Luke says as he grabs the keys and disappears into the doorway behind him.

"Just breathe deeply and go to your happy place!" Jess yells after him and walks over to a table to take another order.

The lunch crowd hits around noon and the diner gets busy quickly, but he still steals occasional glances out at the square and looks for her as he carries plates around and wipes the tables clean. There's no sign of her, and slowly his mood sours and only when the crowd gradually clears, he realizes how much he wanted her to walk through that door again. Dejected and disappointed, he gathers the last batch of plates and as he carries them to the counter, he suddenly notices the diner is completely empty. He walks to the window and looks out in the general direction of the bookstore and tries to think of an excuse to go over there, but everything he thinks of sounds too lame and too obvious even to him. In a weird way, it's a blessing in disguise because he knows he shouldn't come on too strong or she'll just retreat again. He shakes his head, then returns to the counter and starts rinsing out the plates.

The bell over the door sounds and his heart skips a beat as he looks up, but disappointment sinks in again when he sees it's Lorelai. She smiles at him and looks around, then slowly walks over to the counter.

"Wow, I can't remember the last time I walked in here in daylight and the place was empty," she says as she sits down.

He shrugs. "Must be my bubbling personality."

"You know, I don't think even you have it in you to drive everyone out of here just by being here," she laughs.

He shrugs again but also smiles slightly. "Then I guess it's just one of those things." He reaches for a mug. "Coffee?"

"Always. Is there any food left?"

He nods. "Sure. What are you having?"

"Whatever's quickest, just as long as it involves meat."

He yells for a cheeseburger and goes back to the plates in the sink. There's a short silence, but he knows it won't last because this is Lorelai and she always has something to say, but she just sips her coffee and looks at him for a while and it takes her longer than usual to break the silence. "So, how are you? All settled in?"

"Yeah," he says and shrugs. "It's like riding a bike, it somehow comes naturally."

"Are you glad to be back?"

It's the first time someone's asked him that question and it comes as a surprise; he stops what he's doing and looks at her, looking for a hidden catch, but her face shows only genuine interest – and that comes as an even bigger surprise. He bites back a wisecrack and shrugs his shoulders again. "I could do without all the pointing and the staring, but in general, yeah."

She laughs again. "Cut them some slack, they'll get over it soon enough. You've got to understand, you're the closest thing to a delinquent that Stars Hollow ever had, and your coming back is just too juicy to digest silently."

"Somehow, I can't decide if I should be flattered or offended", he says with a smirk.

She chuckles and shrugs her shoulders. "I guess it ultimately depends on your outlook on life."

He says nothing but can't help a small smile. She sips her coffee again and there's another silence.

"So, where have you been, Jess?" she asks, and even though she tries to deliver the question casually, he senses there's something more behind it, but doesn't really care.

"Here, there, everywhere." He looks at her again. "Around."

"Wow, you sound like me when my mother asks me a question. The words come out, but really you say nothing at all."

He shrugs. "I didn't realize you were looking for an actual answer."

"Well, I was," she says and sets her mug down, reaching for the coffee pot. "So let's replay." She pours the coffee and looks at him. "Where have you been, Jess?"

He knows he should resent the question, but somehow, he doesn't, and he tries to think of an answer.

"Buses and trains mostly, and different places in between," he says and reaches for the next plate. "I don't mean to be ambiguous, it's really the best answer I can give you."

"How many places?"

He smiles. "Seventeen."

"You kept count?" she asks, surprised that he answered and trying to digest the number.

"I bought postcards," he says indifferently.

"That's a lot of places," she says bemusedly. "You must have seen a lot of interesting stuff."

A dark expression crosses his face and he shakes his head. "It wasn't that kind of trip."

She studies him for a while; a holler comes from the kitchen and he walks over and returns with her plate. She dumps half a bottle of ketchup on her french fries and starts nibbling on them.

"How come you came back?" She gazes hard at him as she asks the question.

He shrugs. "It was time." He looks at her. "As weird as it sounds, this place is home."

"It was home months ago but you still left."

He resents the challenge, but her tone is warm and there's kindness in her face, so he just takes it in stride. "I know." He considers just leaving it at that, but as unbelievable as it seems, somehow it's easy to talk to her and so he continues. "Back then, I had things to do that I couldn't do here." He doesn't look away from her and there's honesty in his eyes, and Lorelai suddenly understands what Luke meant when he said Jess wasn't angry anymore. She returns to her fries.

"You should have said something, Jess," she says after a while and looks at him again. "You should have said goodbye."

She doesn't mention Rory but she can tell from the look on his face that she doesn't have to.

"Yeah, I know." He looks away and returns to the plates. He struggles with the words for a moment, but he needs to get them out, no matter how misdirected or awkward they may sound. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry I didn't."

The door opens and people come in, and he's grateful for the excuse to grab some menus and walk away. Lorelai watches him over her cheeseburger and marvels at this new Jess she just witnessed and she wonders what happened to him in the last few months. The change is so enormous that it's difficult to comprehend it could occur in such a short time, but just as the thought enters her head, she suddenly remembers Rory and how she's changed in the last months. In a weird way, these changes seem to match one another in force and volume, but conflict in result; it's like the two of them had taken the same journey, but ended up at completely different places, and now Jess is the one that's composed and in touch with his feelings, while Rory is restless and struggling against hers.

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_A/N: _  
_All writers love reviews, good or bad. They are precious insights into our reader's minds. They usually make us try harder. They often make us get better at what we do. They always motivate us to keep going. They show us what we've done well, what we've done badly and what we could have done differently. Ultimately, they make us happy._  
_Just something to think about :)_


	15. Fade To Black And White

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them. No copyright infringement intended.  
A big thank you goes out to everyone who reads, and a a giant thank you to those who have taken the time to review.

**FranzF: **Thank you for a wonderful review - I'll try my best to keep the updates coming on a daily basis for as long as I can. As far as the length of the story goes, I honestly have no idea how long is it going to be - it's actually turning out longer than I expected when I started it, but it sort of writes itself, so I'll just have to see how it goes.  
Since I don't think I'll be coming back to Jonathan Livingstone Seagull in the story, here's the passage that Jess would have underlined in that book: _"If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?"_

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_Mood music: Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me, George Michael & Elton John_

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**15. Fade To Black And White**

Rory leaves the bookstore at five and stops by the market on her way home to pick up some coffee and pop-tarts. It was a slow day at work and she spent the better part of it reading and staring out of the window, confused and agitated because she couldn't get his face out of her head; it was so firmly lodged in her brain that every other thought just faded away. The scene from the diner replayed itself in her mind over and over again, like a broken record, annoying and disturbing and persistent, but unlike the record, there was no button she could just push that would make it stop. As she walks around the shelves in the market, she slowly realizes that he will probably haunt her like this until she knows the answers to all those questions she asks herself every day, over and over again, but she has no idea where to find the strength it will take to face him and ask them all. She can't find out what she needs to know just by looking at him because he's as enigmatic and cryptic to her now as he always was, even more so; before he left, there was a closeness between them and she could at least sense what he was thinking. Now there's just distance, and even though she thinks she could probably still tap into his emotions, she just doesn't dare to do it because it goes both ways and she's frightened that she won't be able to shut that door once she opens it, and she's nowhere near ready to face what's inside. She pays for the coffee and pop-tarts; she exits the market blindly, wrapped in her thoughts, and flinches wildly as she walks straight into him.

"Hey," he says softly and slowly steps back, because she's practically in his arms and there's a panicked look in her eyes.

She swallows. "I… sorry, I didn't see you," she stammers and retreats hastily. She takes a breath and looks up. "What are you doing here?"

"Just on my way to the video store, I thought I'd get a movie." He smiles. "You?"

"On my way home, I just had to stop and pick up some stuff. We're out of coffee and that makes for a very nervous Lorelai in the morning. Or, you know, two very nervous Lorelais, although my being nervous actually comes from the fact that Lorelai number one is nervous because there's no coffee." She knows she's rambling and it makes her feel sick. "It's a vicious circle," she adds quietly and takes a breath, staring at the floor, feeling nauseous.

The video store is on the way to her house, and for a moment he's unsure how to handle this, unsure if she'll be okay with it if he just walks with her. It wouldn't be a very long walk, but still, he wants to make sure she's okay with it and he tries to think of a subtle way to find out how she feels about it, but nothing comes to mind and the silence grows longer. He finally gives up and looks at her.

"Do you mind if we walk together, or would you rather be alone?" he blurts out and as the words hang in the air, they somehow take on a greater meaning, and he's not just asking about this one walk anymore. She looks at him a long moment and listens to her heart as it beats louder and louder, and somehow she feels like she's standing in front of the first one in a long line of doors, and she has to choose now if she's going to open it or not. She wants to, and that scares her, but somehow, pushing him away again scares her more.

"We can walk together," she finally says quietly and he dares to breathe again. They fall into step easily and walk slowly, much slower than either his or her usual pace. Neither speaks for a while and they just share the silence, and it's a comfortable, natural, familiar silence that holds no pressure and demands nothing. They walk close but they don't touch; they are both very careful about that, and they reach the end of the street and turn a corner each wrapped in their own feelings – Jess's are of cautious joy, guilt and anticipation, Rory's a mixture of anxiety, self-doubt and fear, but there's also excitement and a touch of happiness that she tries hard to ignore, but with every step, the feeling multiplies and suddenly she wants to escape this silence and the chaos in her head.

"So, which movie are you getting?" she asks casually, hoping to direct her mind towards something else, anything else.

Jess shrugs. "I don't know." He looks at her. "Any suggestions?"

"Well, what are you in the mood for?"

He thinks about this for a minute. "Surprise. I'm in a mood for surprise. Not the big budget action packed mind numbing Hollywood surprise, more like a subtle but engaging intelligent surprise." He smiles again and it's hard to ignore the warmth in his face. "It's a tall order, I know."

She nods but he can see she's thinking hard because a frown forms on her forehead and she says nothing for a while; he enjoys the opportunity to stare at her blatantly because she's completely oblivious to him, but suddenly a smile breaks on her face and her eyes sparkle as she looks at him. "Get Donnie Darko," she says triumphantly. "If that doesn't surprise you, then nothing will."

He can't form a coherent response immediately because he's utterly lost in her smile and the bright look she's giving him; it's the first time she really smiled at him since he came back and for a second, he just treasures the moment.

"Donnie Darko?" he says when he finds his voice again. "I've never heard of it."

"Good. You should definitely get it then." She shakes her head as she remembers the rabbit. "Weird is an understatement for that one. I really wonder what you'll make of it."

He smiles at her determination. "Okay, sure. Donnie Darko." He steals a sideways glance at her and the smile curves her lips. "What are you doing tonight?"

She sighs. "It's Friday so it's dinner in Hartford. The grandparents are only in town for two weeks so there's no skipping this one."

"Right," he nods and wants to kick himself for forgetting about the dinners. She doesn't seem to care that he did, and they walk silently again for a while, but somehow the silence has changed, like it developed an energy of its own, an energy that's made up of things present but unspoken, of feelings that call for recognition but are left voiceless and now they float between them, creating friction that could easily turn into fireworks.

"How is Steppenwolf coming along?" he asks, looking for something to break the silence and the tension that comes with it.

"Slowly, very slowly" she says. "That guy's head is even more messed up than mine," she adds without thinking, and as she hears the words, her stomach turns over in panic as she understands the implications, certain that they won't go unnoticed.

Jess picks up on it, debates it for a while but decides not to go there. "Yeah, it's not an easy book." He shrugs. "But working through big issues is rarely easy, and that makes the book honest, which then, I think, ultimately makes it good."

She looks at him inquisitively. "You didn't think it was… well, sort of a downer?"

He shakes his head. "No. I don't think you will either, once you finish it, and if you do, you should probably read it again." He smiles to himself. "Maybe it was just easier to relate to for me, because of all the conflicted personality issues. I was always… well, slightly conflicted, to put it mildly."

She smiles but says nothing, and the silence returns.

"How's Lane? I haven't seen her around," he asks.

"Well, you won't, at least not for a while. She's gone to Korea again."

"That sucks."

Rory laughs. "Weird as it may be, she didn't mind going. Turns out her cousins are pretty cool. She had fun over there last year, and somehow she managed to hide from Mrs. Kim just how much fun she had, so this year she sort of wanted to go."

"Really?"

Rory nods her head. "Yeah, she was totally into it. Of course, she made a big drama over it again, for Mrs. Kim's benefit."

Jess laughs. "Yeah, right, I'm guessing she couldn't make it look like she actually wanted to go."

"Exactly." She laughs and looks at him. "You catch on fast."

Jess grins. "This is pretty basic stuff, parental manipulation and so on." He looks at her; the smile is still there and suddenly it becomes painfully clear how much he enjoys being on the receiving end of it. "So, did I miss any crucial events around town?"

She shakes her head. "No, not really. Nothing much really happens here, even you should know that by now."

He laughs. "Are you kidding me? There's more going on in this town than in five average cities put together. There's festivals, parades, memorials… at least one of those every month. And if there's nothing in the calendar that can be celebrated or commemorated, Taylor will just make something up. I think I remember him wanting to commemorate a Tuesday. Luke really went into a fit over that one."

She smiles. "Well, now that you mention it, there was a pie eating contest a few months ago that turned into quite a scandal."

He laughs. "What happened, was there a fist fight over the pies?"

"No, but there was massive food poisoning. People were puking everywhere, it was really gross." She shakes her head and laughs. "Eventually it turned out that Taylor ordered the pies from out of town because it was cheaper that way. Unfortunately, they were past their date of expiry and everyone got sick. There was a huge mutiny after all the vomiting was over. There was even talk of impeachment, but he eventually caved and admitted to it, then gave a huge discount at the market to everyone that was sick and the whole thing kind of faded away."

Jess laughs and shakes his head again. "Amazing. Did you eat the pies?"

"God, no. I tried one and it tasted weird so I kept my distance."

"Smart move", he says and she smiles at him again. There's a surge of confidence after the smile, and he steals a sideways glance at her and decides to risk a slightly more dangerous question. "Pies aside, how have you been?"

She tenses up a little, and there's a beat of silence before she answers. "Okay. Busy with school, mostly." _Tormenting myself over you and why you left, over those books and why you sent them,_ she wants to add and there's a familiar surge of anger, but she shakes it off somehow and takes a breath before she looks at him. She hesitates for a moment, but asks the question nonetheless. "You?"

He shrugs and kicks a stone on the pavement. "Depends on the day. Some were good, others not so good."

Her mouth dries and her breath catches in her throat and thousand alarms go off in her head, screaming at her not to take this bait that hangs in the air, because it leads into dangerous territory that she's not sure she can navigate without getting lost. He looks at her and he knows she doesn't want to talk about this, she doesn't want to hear excuses and explanations and he won't offer any, not yet, but he wants to move past the small talk and into more important issues nonetheless. He knows she won't ask, so he just hopes she'll listen.

"California was a dead-end and I left within two weeks. I had no idea where I was going and I didn't really care, I just bought a ticket and got on a bus, and after that, I just did the same thing over and over again," he says softly. He waits for a reaction, but there isn't one, so he just takes a breath and continues. "I'd find a job and make some money, then just get on the bus again. Sometimes weeks would go by and I'd hardly talk to anyone." He briefly remembers all the imaginary conversations he had with her but decides not to mention them. "There was just an endless chaos in my head to keep me company, and no way to make any sense of it until I started writing it down."

He steals another glance at her but he can't see her face because her hair hides it as she walks next to him silently and stares at her feet. She listens to him talk and her heart beats wildly again, and although she resents herself for listening and refuses to sympathize, she hangs on every word. When he mentions writing, her skin tingles as she remembers giving him the Moleskine. She briefly wonders if that's where all his thoughts ended up and suddenly wishes that they did, but quickly decides it doesn't really matter. She feels a strange sense of pride at the fact that he did write, but the feeling is quickly followed by many others that she doesn't want to feel anymore and she pushes them all away with fierce determination, suddenly angry at him for making her relive them at all.

"Why are you telling me this, Jess?" she snaps at him, still caught up in the wave of anger that just washed over her.

Her tone hurts him, but he hides it well. "Because I've told you all this before, in my head, a million times, over and over again, and I wanted to say it out loud." He tries hard to keep his tone light and casual, but the words themselves are enough to change the atmosphere and that friction that hangs in the air suddenly threatens to turn into a full blown forest fire as she stops dead in her tracks. It takes him few steps to realize she did, and when he turns around and looks at her, there's such a furious look in her eyes that it makes him flinch.

"Some things are better left unsaid," she says severely, her face twisted in anger.

He steps closer, anxious but determined to get his point across; when he speaks, his tone is as gentle as hers was harsh. "Some things, maybe. But this is not one of them." He shakes his head and pushes his hands deeper into his pockets. "You can hate me if you want; you can be angry, you have every right to be, but whatever it is that you feel, you should get it out." He shrugs his shoulders and sighs. "Trust me, I know what it means to keep things bottled up, I know what happens when you ignore them and when you try to run away from them. It can't be done. It took me a long time of running to figure that out." He takes another step. "Whatever you may think of me right now, you should trust me on this - this thing between you and me, this is not better left unsaid."

"There isn't a thing between you and me, Jess. You killed it," she bites back viciously. "I've got nothing to say to you!"

"That's not true and you know it," he warns and his eyes narrow.

She wants to strangle him. "You're unbelievable! What do you want from me?"

"I want to talk about whatever it is that's in your head. I want you to listen to what's inside mine. I want you to scream or yell or whatever it is that you feel you need to do. Hell, I want you to hit me in the face if that would make you feel better, I probably deserve a good punch anyway! But this -" he tries to think of a good word, but it eludes him " – this… pink elephant that's walking between us and that you're so determined to ignore, it's ridiculous!"

"I'm not ignoring the elephant, Jess! It just isn't there, there's nothing there anymore!"

"Really? Then what are you so upset over?" he snaps back and frowns at her. "If you're so indifferent, why are you yelling at me right now?"

He looks at her and it is a firm look, solid and unwavering, and their eyes clash in silent battle. She knows that look he's giving her now, it tells her he's not backing away an inch. It is a trademak of his, this rebellious, relentless and persistent gaze that he can keep for an eternity and it's impossible to look away from. The anger inside her grows, fueled by the certainty and confidence in his eyes and edged on by his presumption that he knows her so well that he dares to stand there and tell her what she's feeling.

"You left, Jess! You left and you said nothing, not then, not for months after that! You don't get to stand here now, flash your new-found wisdom and expect me to just nod my head and spill my guts because you decided it's the right thing to do!"

"That's not what I meant", he says quietly, suddenly feeling very small.

"Then what? What do you want?"

"I just want to talk to you, I want to tell you why I did what I did, I want you to understand why I had to do it!" he yells back, frightened and frustrated.

She shrugs her shoulders and takes a breath. "Why? It doesn't matter anymore. It's done. There's nothing you can say that will undo it. And I don't want to understand."

"Why are you so scared to talk about this?" he asks quietly.

"I'm not scared," she says defensively.

"Yes, you are! You're all tied up in knots over the possibility that if you give me a chance to explain, that what I have to say might actually make sense. Are you so hell-bent on hating me that you can't risk that?"

Somehow it hurts her to hear him say she hates him and she doesn't feel the need to shout anymore; she just looks at him sadly. "I don't hate you, Jess." She shrugs her shoulders. "I just don't trust you." _Or me_, she thinks to herself in an unexpected moment of honesty, but she brushes the thought away swiftly. He looks taken aback and her last sentence seems to defeat him somehow, but she doesn't regret what she said because it's the truth.

"I've never lied to you, Rory," he says quietly.

"I know," she nods. "But you betrayed me, and now, I just don't think I can trust you again."

He knows she's right and it's a bitter pill to swallow because he knows now that he should have said something to her before he left, but he can't change that anymore and so he just stands there, silently wondering if he has lost her and desperately hoping he hasn't. Her face is serene and composed now, but there's sadness and a hint of regret in her eyes, like she is just as sorry as he is that it has come to this. They stand in the middle of the street silently for another minute before she suddenly starts to feel hollow and drained, and begins to walk away slowly. He doesn't follow; he just turns slightly and watches her as she walks away. After a few steps, she turns around and his heart skips a beat, hoping for a miracle that will somehow turn everything around and make this distance between them vanish.

"I really wish you never left, Jess", she says quietly before she turns around again and disappears down the street.

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_A/N: _  
_All writers love reviews, good or bad. They are precious insights into our reader's minds. They usually make us try harder. They often make us get better at what we do. They always motivate us to keep going. They show us what we've done well, what we've done badly and what we could have done differently. Ultimately, they make us happy._  
_Just something to think about :)_


	16. Kind Of Dazzled

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them. No copyright infringement intended.  
A big thank you goes out to everyone who reads, and a a giant thank you to those who have taken the time to review.

This is a veeeeeeery long chapter. It just came out that way, and I've been toiling over it for days, trying to figure out how to best split it in two parts, but I just couldn't find a logical place because it's very closely tied together, both in a sense of time and atmosphere, and I finally decided to just leave it be. Sorry if the length scares you :)

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_Mood music: Don't Get Me Wrong, The Pretenders_

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**16. Kind Of Dazzled**

Saturday comes and goes, and Rory sticks to the house and her book, enduring long, inquisitive looks from Lorelei and evading all her attempts to be lured out of the house. Alone in her room, she feels safe and somehow removed from everything, and staring at her book provides a good alibi as she retreats into her heart and tries to analyze what she's feeling. She knows he's reaching for her, she knows he's trying hard to somehow fix what he's broken between them and a warm glow spreads inside her at the thought. For a moment, she gives into it and daydreams how easy it would be to just let him, and bring back to life all those feelings that simmer beneath the surface, bound by reason and a sense of self-preservation. All she has to do is let go, and there would be laughter and kisses again, but the dream ends abruptly, like it always does, as she remembers the emptiness and the pain that will follow if he leaves again, and suddenly the glow is gone and there's just fear that grips her with such force that everything else fades before it.

Sunday brings a change in a form of a phone call; it's Paris and she insists that Rory comes to Madeline's birthday party with her that evening. Rory remembers receiving the invitation; she also remembers vividly the satisfaction with which she decided to ignore it, but although she does her best to get out of it, all evasive maneuvers fail in the face of force that is Paris, helped by Lorelei who is fed up with watching Rory mope and brood around the house and decides resolutely it's time to get her out of it. Outnumbered and outvoted, Rory caves and agrees to go, but only after she extracts a firm promise from Lorelei that she will pick her up as soon as the dinner she's giving at the inn is over. Resigned to her fate, Rory picks out a dress, wraps up an unopened CD by an obscure boy band that Lorelei procures from somewhere and fixes a smile on her face as Paris pulls up in the driveway.

By the time they arrive in Hartford, her mood picks up a little; after the initial resentment of being pushed into going fades, she begins to see the logic behind it and appreciates a distraction from her inner chaos. The careful optimism proves short-lived, however, when she finds herself surrounded by faces she doesn't really know and dragged into conversations she couldn't care less about. She wonders around the house and the people aimlessly for a while, until she finds herself with Paris again and the evening takes a turn for the worse as Paris begins to lay out her agenda for the student government in excruciating detail. Somewhere between the plans for the September fundraiser and the homecoming theme, Rory discovers punch; the fifth glass she empties finally manages to numb the edge in Paris's voice and a comfortable haze develops in her head, the colors around her grow softer and somehow, suddenly everything is funny. An hour goes by and she actually enjoys herself, but as she finishes two more glasses, suddenly the music and the people get too loud and the house too hot, and she just wants to get out of there. She checks her watch and although the numbers are a little blurry, she figures out it's only ten o'clock and knows Lorelei won't be here before midnight. Two more hours of this house and the people in it suddenly feel like a small eternity and she decides quickly it's more than she can stand, so she finds her sweater and heads for the bus stop.

The cool air outside feels exquisite against her face and she's suddenly smiling again; for some reason, she feels deliriously happy although she can't really figure out why, but she quickly stops wondering and just enjoys the feeling. The world around her looks softer somehow and occasionally, her sense of direction seems slightly off, but she doesn't care, she's just happy and gently hums to herself as she walks down the street. As she reaches the bus station, the wind picks up and in the distance and several bolts of lightening light up the sky, but she just looks at them, mildly interested but not worried at all. She sits at the station for a few minutes and plays with her purse; when the bus pulls in, she jumps up and the world around her spins for a minute before she figures out which way is up, but she just giggles and climbs up the rear door.

Once inside, she takes a minute to get her bearings and looks around for a place to sit. The bus is nearly empty; there's a few people in front, and in the back, with a book in hand (of course), there's Jess. The happiness she's feeling multiplies several times over as she sees him, and she's surprised at the total lack of anxiety or apprehension as she looks at him; smiling brightly, she walks over to him.

"Hi," she says and drops on the seat next to him, snatching the book from his hands.

At first, he's startled, then he looks confused, but he recovers quickly. "Hi," he says and looks at her carefully.

"Where have you been?", she asks playfully.

Something doesn't feel right - two days ago she walked away from him like she never wanted to see him again, let alone talk to him, and now she sits here, beaming; however, since it is a good thing in general, he decides not to question it right now.

"The movies. There was a tribute to Kurosawa this weekend so I went to see Rashomon." He looks at her closely again; the smile is still there. "How about you?"

"Madeline had a party and Paris and Mom made me go," she says and rolls her eyes. "It was a nightmare."

He chuckles softly. "Why was it a nightmare?"

"Oh please. You wouldn't be caught dead at one of these and you're asking me why it was a nightmare?" She shakes her head. "They made me go, I went, I looked at all those people that I have nothing in common with and don't care about at all, then Paris nearly drove me to either suicide or homicide with her student government agenda before I found the presence of mind to just get out of there." She frowns. "And at the time, they were showing Rashomon. What a waste."

Lightening strikes outside the window and a thunder roll follows; she looks outside and smiles widely, then looks at him again. "God, I wish it would rain. It would be great to just go outside and run around in the rain. I haven't done that since I was a kid."

It's such a strange sentence that he looks at her again carefully; there's something different about her, aside from this inexplicable mood swing, but he can't pinpoint what it is.

"You want to run around in the rain?", he asks with a smirk, wondering what's gotten into her.

"Very much," she giggles, and leans back in her seat with her eyes closed. "Or go skinny-dipping. That would be fun too. Or at least I think it would be, I've never tried so I guess I don't really know."

His jaw drops slightly as a very graphic visual presents itself in his mind, and for a moment, he's completely caught up in it before a new thunder roll snaps him back to reality. He stares at her and can't wrap his mind around how weird she's behaving, but before he can give it a second thought, she bolts up again and starts taking off her jacket.

"Is it hot in here?", she asks breathlessly as she untangles her hands from the sleeves.

He shakes his head and frowns. "Not particularly, no."

She moves her hair off her face and takes a deep breath. "And this guy should drive more carefully, this whole bus is swinging like crazy," she says and sinks back into her seat, closing her eyes again.

Suddenly, the dots in his head connect and her behavior makes perfect sense. He looks at her closely. She is flushed and breathing deeply, and he frowns.

"Rory, did you drink at that party?"

"Umm, there was fruit punch." She smiles. "It was really good."

He chuckles. "Yes, I can see that. How much did you have?"

She shrugs. "I don't know." She giggles. "Enough to make Paris's monologue interesting."

He bites back a laugh and shakes his head. "How are you feeling? Are you nauseous?"

She opens her eyes and looks at him. "Why would I be nauseous?"

He shrugs. "Alcohol tends to do that."

She frowns. "I had fruit punch. There's no alcohol in fruit punch."

"I'm betting there was in this one," he smiles.

She gapes at him. "You think I'm drunk?"

"Oh, I know you are. You're flushed, you're hot although it's really cool tonight, the curves on the road bother you, you want to run around in the rain, not to mention the skinny-dipping, and somehow, you managed to find Paris interesting." He shrugs his shoulders. "It's a textbook example."

She closes her eyes and leans back into her seat. "You're delusional."

"Fine," he shrugs and pulls a bottle of water out of his jacket. "Are you thirsty?"

She nods and opens her eyes, and he hands her the bottle. "When you get home, you should eat something, take an aspirin and go to bed." He smirks. "You'll be as good as new in the morning."

She takes a long sip then hands the bottle back and says nothing; she just closes her eyes again. There's another roll of thunder and heavy drops of rain start beating against the windows and the darkness outside thickens. They sit in silence for a while and he looks at her, thinking how brightly she smiled at him when she sat down and how there was nothing but joy in her face as she looked at him, for the first time since he's been back. _I should have known she'd been drinking right then_, he thinks bitterly and looks out in the rain.

"I don't feel so good," he suddenly hears her say and he turns toward her quickly. "My head is spinning."

"Okay, just sit up, open your eyes and look straight ahead," he says and watches her carefully as she straightens up and her eyes open. "We're almost there."

"I'm really hot and there's no air in here," she says quietly and runs her hands over her face. He immediately stands up and opens a window; it's raining heavily outside but there's also wind and it blows some air their way.

"Better?", he asks as he sits back down and looks at her anxiously.

She just nods and says nothing, but her face grows paler every second and now he's really worried she will be sick. Not a moment to soon, lights appear through the rain and the bus turns into Stars Hollow and stops; she gets up immediately and practically runs out into the rain. He picks up her jacket and follows her out.

It's pouring outside and they are both wet before the bus is out of sight, and Jess immediately knows he can't let her walk home in this weather; the diner is just across the street and appears to be a much better solution. He turns around to tell her that, but the words never come out as he sees she's slowly twirling in place, with her arms outstretched and a big smile on her face. It's such a silly, surreal scene that he just stands there and watches her move as her smile turns into laughter and she twirls faster and faster. He only snaps out of it when he sees her begin to fall; he grabs her by the arms and sets her straight again.

"This is great," she giggles as she holds on to him. "You should try it."

"Maybe later," he smiles and steers her toward the diner. "Come on, let's go."

"Where are we going?", she asks as she starts walking.

"To the diner," he says. "You can't walk home like this."

"Okay," she says and wipes the rain off her face; it's a futile attempt.

They barely take a few steps and there's such a rush of wind that it nearly knocks them off their feet, and Jess suddenly remembers there was a storm warning on the evening news, although it was announced for much later in the night. He grabs her by the arm and walks faster; as they reach the diner and he unlocks the door, another wind rush almost rips it out of his hand. He pushes her inside, shuts the door and locks it again. He turns around and looks at her, and there's a moment of awkward silence.

"Do you want to call your Mom and have her come get you?", he asks because he feels that's what he should do.

She shakes her head. "She can't; she has a dinner party at the inn. She is supposed to call me when she's done." She smiles. "It's okay, I'll just ask Luke to take me home."

For a second, he says nothing and just looks at her. "Luke's gone fishing. He'll be back tomorrow."

"Oh," she says and thinks about this. "I'll just call my Mom then, I'm sure she can get away for fifteen minutes." She looks at him but she doesn't reach for her phone; when several long seconds go by and she still doesn't move, he suddenly wonders if maybe she doesn't really want to go, and his heart skips a beat.

"You don't have to call her," he says a little too quickly. "You could just stay here and wait until she calls you. The weather might clear a little by then; it's not a great time to be driving," he says and nods to the window.

She doesn't look outside; she just looks at him and nods slowly. "Yeah." She smiles again. "That would probably be better."

His heart beats so loudly now that he's worried she'll hear it, but he smiles back at her. "Come on, let's go upstairs. I'll find you something dry to wear."

She follows him up the stairs and there's a vague feeling inside her that says she shouldn't be doing this, but she wants so badly to be here with him right now that she just ignores it, still safe in her world of soft shapes and colors and unrestrained happiness. It feels so good to be around him and to talk to him that she's not willing to deny herself that feeling yet and she just doesn't care for right or wrong tonight.

The apartment is dark when they walk in, but they can hear the wind howl because the kitchen window is open and the draft slams it shut so hard when they open the door that they both flinch. Jess hurries over and bolts it shut and turns the lights on in the kitchen. They are both so wet that they're dripping all over the floor, and he walks over to his closet and pulls out a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. He takes them over to her.

"These might be a little big for you, but they'll have to do. There's clean towels in the bathroom if you need them," he says as he hands her the clothes. She smiles and walks into the bathroom. As the door closes behind her, he leans against the counter and runs his hands through his hair, his mind in chaos. If someone had told him two days ago she'd be here today, he'd have laughed in their face and called them a lunatic, but somehow, she is here nonetheless. She's not thinking straight, a voice reminds him; he's aware of that, but although she'd been drinking, she's not drunk and she knows what she's doing – it seems she's had just enough to let her guard down a little.

Jess suddenly feels cold and remembers he's wet, so he walks to the closet and finds a shirt. Just as he pulls off the one he's wearing, he hears the door open and he turns around. Rory's standing in the doorway and she looks so small in his clothes. Just as he smiles and opens his mouth to tease her about it, the look she gives him instantly makes him forget what he was about to say. He knows that look, it's painfully familiar although he hasn't seen it in months, and a thousand flames begin to dance over his skin as her eyes travel over him, searching and silent. He knows that he should move and break this spell, but he can't; she moves instead, but she doesn't turn away or take her eyes off him- she just walks across the room slowly until she's standing right in front of him and the energy she brings with her makes it difficult to breathe and impossible to think straight. Very slowly, she lifts her hand and lays it on his chest and it rests there, small and warm, while his heart beats wildly under it.

"You're real," she whispers and lifts her eyes. "Ever since you came back, on some level I thought that if I touched you, you'd just .. disappear."

He can't think of anything to say, not while she's touching him or standing so close; his mind is completely blank for a moment and there's just an overwhelming desire to kiss her and somehow, he senses that she wouldn't mind if he did.

"I'm here," he whispers. "And I'm not going anywhere."

As he watches her face and a small smile that curves her lips, he suddenly understands that he really loves her, not just for today or tomorrow, but probably forever. The feeling is bitter and sweet at the same time because it makes him realize that he has to step away from her now if he ever wants to stand so close to her again. There will be a new day tomorrow, a day without this punch-induced carelessness and she will wake up and judge him by what he does or doesn't do now. Certain that it's the hardest thing he ever had to do, aside from walk down that alley in New York, he swallows hard, then gently steps back from her and pulls on a dry shirt. He needs some time to get his head straight and his pulse to slow down so he walks to the kitchen and gets her a glass of water and an aspirin. When he returns, he finds her curled up on the sofa.

"Here, you should take this," he says and hands her the water and the pill. "It might spare you a splitting headache tomorrow morning."

"Thanks," she says quietly and smiles at him, but the smile is not as bright anymore and she looks tired. He thinks about sitting next to her for a moment, but ultimately decides the armchair is a wiser choice. He sits across from her and they look at each other.

"So how does it feel, to be back?", she asks after a while.

"It's good," he nods. "The diner's the same, Luke is as lovely as I remember him, your Mom still talks more than anyone I know, and Taylor still looks at me like I'm going to stick him up or something."

She smiles again. "I told you nothing really changes around here."

He looks away from her. "Some things changed," he says quietly, and when he looks at her again, her eyes tell him she knows what he meant; her smile disappears and it's her turn to look away.

"Some things had to. You've been gone a long time." Although his heart clenches at the remark, when she looks at him again, there's no accusation in her eyes. "I hope you used it well."

He immediately recognizes the hidden question; he thinks about how to answer it for a minute but ultimately decides it's not the right time for specifics. "I think I did," he says softly. "It took me a while, and if I could go back, I'd do some things differently, but in the end, I did what I set out to do."

She nods and there's a beat of silence while she plays with the fringes on the pillow in her lap, but then she takes a deep breath and finds his eyes again, and the look she gives him is firm and clear. "Was it worth it?", she asks in a tone that quivers slightly but still sounds determined and resolute.

"I don't know yet," he says quietly but he smiles a moment later. "As ridiculous as it may sound, it's like that Kenny Rogers song, The gambler – you know that one?"

She shakes her head.

He frowns, concentrating. "_You've got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run; You never count your money, while you're sitting at the table, there'll be time enough for counting when the dealing's done_." He shrugs. "I feel like I'm still sitting at the table," he says with a small smile.

She looks stupefied at first, but then starts laughing. "Did you just quote a Kenny Rogers song from memory?"

He tries to look superior, but can't quite manage it, so he shrugs and smiles. "You're never going to let me live that one down, will you?"

She cracks up again and shakes her head. "No, probably not, sorry. It's just too delicious."A familiar sparkle returns to her eyes. "So you're into country music now," she says playfully. "That's… different. Did you get a Stetson to go with that?"

He rolls his eyes. "Fine, take your best shot, but there's some pretty good stuff there."

She laughs. "What happened, did you stumble onto a rodeo and adopt a whole new lifestyle?"

"No," he says pointedly and gives her a dirty look. "I hitched a ride with a trucker in Nebraska. His name was Frank and I rode with him all the way to Chicago, and the guy was seriously into country. At first, I thought it would drive me crazy, but once he stopped singing, I started to listen and I don't know…" He smiles. "It kind of grows on you after a while."

"I see", she nods seriously, and says nothing for a moment, but then she gives him an anxious look. "Is it contagious? Should I be worried?"

He sighs and shakes his head. "Let's just drop it, okay?"

"Sure," she shrugs with a chuckle. "Any other new habits or discoveries I should know about?", she asks with mocked concern. "Elvis is alive, Sidney Sheldon is a great writer, aliens landed outside your window, you know, that kind of thing?"

"You're hilarious," he says and reaches for the remote. "I'm turning on the TV now."

She laughs. "Okay, I'm sorry, I'm done." She stretches on the sofa and pulls a blanket over herself, yawning. He still turns on the TV and flips through the channels, and she just watches him for a while. He looks the same, but he's thinner and his face is somehow more pronounced because of it and she suddenly remembers the hard definition of his arms and chest from when she touched him, and the usual heat runs through her. She shrugs it off quickly and sternly directs her mind to something else.

"So, any particular favorites in the country genre that you'd recommend to a country virgin like me?", she asks casually.

"I thought you said you were done," he says to the TV.

"I'm done with teasing you about it," she says. "Now I'm actually asking a question."

He looks at her suspiciously and she laughs. "I swear, I'm perfectly serious!"

He looks back at the TV and shrugs. "I liked Johnny Cash. You should try that."

"Okay," she says and yawns. "I think I'm going to."

"Why the sudden change of heart?", he asks with a smirk.

She shrugs. "You used to have pretty good taste in music, so there's a good chance you're right about this too."

"Right, and that never crossed your mind a few minutes ago?"

"It did, but I just couldn't resist the temptation to watch you squirm for a while." She laughs. "It was fun."

He just smiles at the TV and says nothing; he flips through a few more channels and finally settles for a documentary that seems interesting. It is still raining outside and the wind beats against the windows; when the commercial break comes on he turns to her to say something but quickly stops himself when he sees she's asleep. He turns the volume down and reaches for a book on the table, but the pages can't hold him and soon he just watches her sleep. She looks peaceful and tiny, curled up on the sofa in his clothes, and she is close enough to touch and to hold and to kiss, but somehow, she's never been further away at the same time. After tonight, he knows that she still has feelings for him somewhere within, but she's buried them so deep and she's fighting them so hard that her determination scares him. He's not sure whether it comes from anger or fear or pain and he doesn't know how to break through these walls that she's surrounded herself with, but he's grateful for the crack that appeared in them tonight, because it showed there's still something there to pin his hopes on. He wonders again if he would maybe be holding her right now if he had only told her he was leaving and told her why he had to leave when he did, but he shakes the question off quickly because he can't change that now and there's no point in tormenting himself over it. Things are what they are, he reminds himself sadly and just watches her quietly; her hair is messy and tangled on the pillow, her skin is like porcelain and there's a soft blush on her cheeks; she's breathing deeply and she looks so peaceful that he doesn't dare move, afraid that he'll destroy that perfect picture.

The soft ringtone of a cell-phone startles him and it takes him a second to figure out it's coming from the little bag she left on the kitchen table. He gets up quickly and finds it, at first intending to just shut it off but the display shows it's Lorelai; he remembers she has no idea Rory's not in Hartford anymore and for a moment, he debates whether he should wake her up, but eventually decides not to and flips the phone open.

"Hey hon, the dinner's over, finally; I'm ready to come and rescue you," Lorelai's voice comes breathlessly. "Where do you want me to pick you up?"

He closes his eyes and takes a breath. "Lorelai, it's Jess."

There's a moment of shocked silence on the other end. "Jess?" The surprise in her voice quickly turns to panic. "What are you doing with Rory's phone? Is she okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, she's fine," he says quickly. "We ran into each other on the bus from Hartford."

Another beat of silence. "Wow, it must have been some party if she was desperate enough to take the bus…"

Jess smiles. "Yeah, from what I heard, it really was."

"Okay, but again – what are you doing answering her phone? Where is she?"

Jess takes a breath. "Well, it was pouring when we got to Stars Hollow, so I didn't think she should walk home, and Luke's not here and I don't have a car, so she decided to stay here until she heard from you."

"Okay, that makes sense – but again, why are you answering her phone? Where is she?"

Jess looks over to Rory. "She's on the sofa. Sleeping."

Another silence. "She's sleeping?"

"Yeah," Jess nods.

"Okay, that's very weird. She's in your apartment right now and she's sleeping?" There's genuine concern in her voice now. "Is she feeling okay?"

It's Jess's turn to pause and wonder how to answer that; he's pretty sure Lorelai's going to figure out what happened anyway, and somehow, he doesn't really want to lie.

"Okay, Jess? I promise I won't freak out over whatever you're debating whether you should tell me or not, but I definitely will freak out in a matter of seconds if you don't tell me something, so just spill!"

He smiles. "Yeah, okay, sorry. She said there was some fruit punch at that party and I'm guessing it was spiked, because it sort off went to her head a little." He shuts his eyes and cringes.

There's another silence and he can almost see Lorelai gaping into the phone. "Rory is drunk?"

"No, not drunk." He shakes his head and smiles. "There was no falling down or slurring, if that's what you're picturing. She was just a little… tipsy earlier, but I gave her an aspirin and then she just fell asleep."

"Okay…. Okay, I'll be there in a few minutes."

Jess nods. "Sure. I locked the diner but the back door's open, so you can come right up."

"Okay, thanks. I'll see you in a bit."

Jess flips the phone closed, puts it back in Rory's bag and returns to the armchair. She's still sleeping and he finds his book again, and this time, he manages to read simply because it's easier not to look at her and wonder what he'll see in her eyes once she opens them. The whole evening suddenly feels like a snapshot from the past, filled with laughter and ease, and he knows it will all be gone the moment she wakes up. Her head will clear and that distance between them will return, she'll be angry and hurt again, and determined to stay that way.

The door opens quietly and he nearly jumps out of his skin as Lorelai tiptoes into the room; her eyes are wide and searching, and she stops as they settle on Rory. Slowly, her face relaxes as she watches her sleep; her eyes travel over to Jess and she walks over to the table and sits down. Jess puts his book away and follows her into the kitchen.

"Hi," she whispers.

"Hi," he whispers back, and they just stare at each other for a moment before Jess seeks refuge in hospitality. "So, can I get you something to drink?"

She looks surprised. "Um, no, I'm good."

There's silence again and he shoves his hands into his pockets and looks at his feet.

"As ridiculous as this sounds since we are in your house, you're welcome to sit down," she says with a small smile.

He's caught off gurad but manages a smile in return. "Okay," he says and flips a chair around, straddling it, and watches her eyes travel back to Rory. "She's fine," he says quietly.

She nods. "Yeah, I know. It's just weird, she usually doesn't drink. She sometimes has some wine at her grandparents', but only on special occasions."

"I don't think she knew there was alcohol in that punch. When I said so, she nearly bit my head off." He smirks. "Will she get in trouble for this?"

"No. It was my fault, I shouldn't have made her go."

Jess gives her an inquisitive look. "Why did you?"

She shrugs her shoulders. "I thought she should get out of the house and see people. She's been shut in her room the whole weekend." She studies his face for a while before she speaks again. "She's been shut in her room a lot lately."

"Lately?" He looks at the table. "As in, since I came back?"

She looks at him for a long time, wondering what to say. Just as she decides not to really say anything, he looks up at her, and even though he tries to hide it, there's sadness in his eyes and it's the same kind of sadness that she sees in Rory, only hers is harder to catch behind all the anger and the fear. She takes a breath and smiles. "No, not since you came back. Since you left."

He just looks at her and says nothing, but seems to forget himself for a moment, and she can clearly see feelings change in his face – there's regret, there's sorrow and finally, there's fear, and then he looks away.

"She must really hate me," he mumbles quietly.

Lorelai shakes her head. "I don't think she hates you. I'm sure she wants to, but I don't think she does."

"She won't talk to me," he blurts out. "I mean, she'll talk about books and movies and the weather and …country music, but she won't let me tell her why I left. Whenever I try, she just shuts down."

"Country music? Seriously?" A smile escapes her at a dirty look he throws her, and she quickly stifles the chuckle. "Right, sorry." She shrugs. "You're expecting too much too soon. Maybe you should stick to the weather for now and wait until she asks about everything else."

He shakes his head. "She doesn't want to know about anything else."

"Yes, she does; she's just not ready to hear about it yet. Give her time, and she'll ask."

He just hangs his head again and says nothing, and Lorelai is once again amazed at having this conversation with him, amazed to the point that she wants to pinch herself because it is so unreal. There's no wisecracks or evasiveness, there's just honesty; he's changed, and regardless of Rory's feelings, she thinks he's better off for having left, because the experience has somehow made him grow and she realizes that the unease and apprehension she used to feel around him are just not there anymore.

"It's late, I should get Rory home," she says quietly.

"Yeah," he nods and stands up. "I think I'll go and have a shower, you two don't really need me to find your way out."

Lorelai is surprised at first, but she suddenly understands that he'd rather not face Rory and she just smiles. "Yeah, you go ahead, we'll be fine," she says as she gets up from the table.

Jess gets up as well and takes one quick look at Rory before he walks into the bathroom and closes the door behind him. He runs the shower and leans against the wall; he notices Rory's clothes hanging on the towel rack and hears voices in the living room. The conversation is quiet and he can't make it out, but the voices fade away quickly and he hears the apartment door close. He doesn't move; he just stares at the steam that rises in swirls as the water runs into the bathtub.

* * *

_A/N: _  
_All writers love reviews, good or bad. They are precious insights into our reader's minds. They usually make us try harder. They often make us get better at what we do. They always motivate us to keep going. They show us what we've done well, what we've done badly and what we could have done differently. Ultimately, they make us happy._  
_Just something to think about :)_


	17. Closest Thing To Crazy

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them. No copyright infringement intended.  
A big thank you goes out to everyone who reads, and a a giant thank you to those who have taken the time to review.

* * *

_Mood music: The Closest Thing To Crazy, Katie Melua_

* * *

**17. Closest Thing To Crazy**

Rory wakes up early and headache-free; the clock on her night stand says it's 6:30. She gazes out of her window at the clear blue sky and the shy rays of sun that dance over the trees outside. It's hard to believe there was a vicious storm out there just a few hours ago, just as it is almost impossible to believe she ever went to that party or drank all that punch – or spent most of the evening asleep on Jess's couch. Almost impossible, because she remembers it all – the punch, the laughter, the bus ride, the spinning in the rain, the conversation.. and that touch. She remembers the intense craving in her heart to touch him and she remembers the texture of his skin under her fingers so vividly that it could have happened only seconds ago. She remembers that one moment when he looked at her and she thought he might kiss her and she feels herself blush as she remembers how hard she wished he would, how much she wanted him to and how strong that desire was that in that one moment, she was perfectly willing to forget about everything else, about the anger, and the pain, and the caution and the fear. She hates that he is able to do that to her, that she can't fight these feelings that he wakes inside her and that she has no control over them; she hates that it feels so good to talk to him and to be around him, but most of all, she hates the fact that it all feels so right, so natural and so easy when it shouldn't.

It shouldn't, because he left her months ago, he just disappeared, he said nothing then and never called or wrote or explained or asked about her. He just sent books, ambiguous, cryptic little pieces of himself, enigmatic and elusive. They held his thoughts in the margins, but not his feelings; there were no hints to his heart, no apologies or explanations, no answers to any of her questions, there was nothing in them that showed any emotion at all. Except the last one, she admits to herself unwillingly, but even in those lines there was nothing definite, nothing beyond a powerful implication, but an implication nonetheless. She desperately tries to remember the phrasing, but she can't – she just remembers a violent surge of grief when she read the lines, and the anger it birthed, and the enormous relief she felt when she threw all those books out, determined to do the same with her feelings. The books were gone, but the feelings weren't, and for the first time, she finally dares to acknowledge the fact that, maybe, they never will be.

She suddenly feels cold and alone and lost. She gets up and tiptoes up the stairs; she opens Lorelai's door quietly and crawls into her bed carefully, hoping to feel safe and protected, and although it helps a little, her throat still tightens and she cries silently.

Mothers have an unmistakable sense of their children, and immediately, Lorelai slowly moves closer and snuggles against Rory's back. "Shhh," she whispers into her hair and slides her arm around her. "Whatever it is, it will get better, or go away, or diminish in time, I promise you."

"I don't know what to do, Mom", Rory whimpers miserably. "I don't know what to do."

"That's okay, it happens sometimes," Lorelai whispers and hugs her closer. "You'll figure it out."

"How? When?" Rory asks desperately.

"There will come a moment and you'll just know," Lorelai says simply.

"There are a lot of moments in which I know things, Mom", Rory breathes. "How am I supposed to recognize this one?"

Lorelai smiles. "Because it won't be a moment you have to recognize, it will be a moment that you feel. Reason and logic will have nothing to do with it."

Rory wipes the tears away. "I know what feels right already, but it felt right before and it turned out so wrong," she says sadly.

"Sometimes, you just don't get everything right the first time around, even if you try your best," Lorelai says softly. "Sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes, you never get it right."

"Then what's the point, really?" Rory whispers and shakes her head.

Lorelai shrugs. "The point is that you keep trying, I guess."

"And be miserable, and get hurt, and be this screwed up?"

"If that's what it takes. Incredible as it sounds, but yeah, it's always better to be true to yourself and miserable than it is to fool yourself just to avoid getting hurt," Lorelai sighs and strokes Rory's hair gently. "Please, just trust me on that."

There's a silence before Rory speaks again. "Not everyone can do that, Mom," she says quietly.

Lorelai shakes her head. "Yeah, anyone can. Some just don't dare to."

"Maybe sometimes it just hurts too much," Rory says weakly.

Lorelai hugs her closer. "You're hurting now too," she says quietly. "It's horrible when someone hurts you, but right now, you're hurting yourself, and isn't that even worse?"

Rory takes a deep breath and shakes her head. "I wish I could hate him. I should hate him, he just left, without a word. I should be angry, I should never want to see him again, but somehow, every time I see him, it gets harder to walk away, and every time I walk away, all I want to do is just go back, and even though I keep reminding myself how horrible it felt when he left and how much worse it will be if he does it again, it makes no difference, because these feelings I have are so much stronger than any force of reason and I just can't fight them, no matter how hard I try. I should hate him for what he did, but I can't."

Lorelai listens and strokes her hair gently. "Did you ask him why he did it?", she asks softly. "Maybe there was a good reason."

"Maybe there was," Rory shrugs. "Maybe there was a good reason he left, but a good reason he didn't say anything, a good reason he never called or wrote? A good reason he hurt me so badly? I can't think of any. I didn't deserve that, I didn't deserve the vanishing act and then nothing for months."

"Except the books," Lorelai offers gently.

Rory sighs and stares out the window, remembering how unbelievably gratifying it felt to get rid of those books, but somehow, they were still here. "The books. I can't figure out why he sent those books."

"I can't figure out why you trashed them," Lorelai points out and immediately feels Rory tense up.

"How do you even know about that?" she mutters quietly.

Lorelai shrugs. "I found them in the trash when I was cleaning out the junk from the car." She shakes her head. "I just don't get it; you read those books, they had been arriving for months. It was hard but you still read them, and then suddenly, you throw them out? Why? What made you do that?"

Rory ignores the question. "Did you leave them there?" she asks in a quivering voice.

Lorelai smiles sadly. "No," she says with a sigh. "Books don't belong in the trash, regardless of what made you want to get rid of them."

"I was angry, I was so very angry" Rory whispers.

"I guessed as much," Lorelai says simply. "What I can't figure out is what could have made you so angry to throw away _books_. It's completely beyond me."

Rory sighs; her throat tightens again and she swallows hard. "He wrote something in the last one, something that just made me snap, something that implied he still cared and it seemed very cruel to me at the time that he should write something like that after months of silence." Her eyes start to sting and she cries again. "The funny thing is, I don't even remember what he wrote. It was something out of a poem or a song, but I don't remember any of the words, I just remember it broke my heart all over again, but for some reason, it didn't make me sad, it made me furious and I just wanted to get rid of the books and everything else that had anything to do with him. So I just threw it all in the box, shoved the box in the trash and it felt wonderful, it felt liberating and for a while, I was fine." She whimpers softly. "I was great, until he came back."

Lorelai sighs. "It's never that easy, you know. Getting rid of something doesn't mean you'll get rid of the reason it disturbed you in the first place."

Rory nods. "Yeah, I've noticed that," she says quietly. "Allhough it may have worked a whole lot better if the reason itself hadn't materialized in Stars Hollow again."

Lorelai chuckles softly. "Maybe, but eventually, you would have still been sorry you destroyed such a big part of your life. You would have wanted those books back at some point, if for no other reason, then just so you can go over them again in sixty years and remember what it was like to be sixteen."

"Forgive me if I'm not capable of really appreciating that perspective right now," Rory sighs, slightly agitated.

Lorelai smiles into her hair. "That's okay. You may be unusually reasonable and level-headed, but you are sixteen. Some of life's greater truths are just not available to you yet. I actually think there's a rule about that."

"Well in that case, thank you for bringing yourself down to my level," Rory retorts sarcastically.

Lorelai closes her eyes and shakes her head. "I rest my case," she mutters quietly." In any case, the books are still here so when you're ready to look at them, they're downstairs in the closet, next to the Max box."

Rory nods but says nothing for a while; she just lies on her side quietly and listens to her heart beat while Lorelai strokes her hair.

"Mom?"

"Yeah?"

Rory takes a breath. "If you were me, what would you do?"

Lorelai smiles. "I'm not you so it doesn't really matter."

"I know," Rory nods. "But what would you do?"

"I don't know, hon. I can't answer that," Lorelai sighs. "But I'll tell you what I think _you_ should do. You have a thousand questions that only Jess can answer. Maybe it's time to put aside your pride and anger and fear and whatever else and just get some answers. I know that sounds scary, but trust me, whatever happens, you'll survive that conversation." She shrugs. "Once you get those answers, you just go on from there, wherever it may take you."

Rory swallows hard and closes her eyes, and her heart climbs into her throat again. She knew the answer to that question before she asked it, just like she's known for a while that it would all eventually come down to this, to somehow finding the strength to have that conversation with him and face whatever comes next. The ironic thing is that she has somehow come full circle in the meantime – she used to fear that what he said would make her forgive and forget, and she didn't want to do that; now, that's all she wants to do, but she's scared that what he tells her won't be good enough and she won't be able to do it.

"Do you want me to stop by the bookstore and tell Andrew you're not feeling well?" Lorelai asks softly.

Rory shakes her head. "No, I'll be okay."

Lorelai sits up. "You're sure?"

Rory turns around and looks at her; she even manages a small smile. "Yeah, I'm sure." She sits up as well and gives Lorelai a firm hug. "Thanks, Mom," she whispers.

Lorelai smiles and kisses her head. "Any time." She pulls away and strokes Rory's hair. "Just remember this moment when I'm old and senile, and you're deciding whether or not to ship me off to a retirement home in Florida."

..............................

Jess wakes up feeling tired. He went to sleep late and he wakes up with a jerk to the alarm clock that shrieks bloody murder. He shuts it off with a vengeance, untangles himself from the sheets and blindly stumbles into the kitchen, where he puts some coffee on before he finds his way to the bathroom and splashes some cold water on his face. As he looks in the mirror, he notices Rory's clothes that are still hanging on the towel rack behind him. They are dry now and he finds a bag for them and hangs them on the doorknob before he takes a shower. By the time he's done, his coffee is ready and he sits at the table, sipping it slowly, as he waits for his brain to catch up with the rest of his body. He is not a morning person, and it always takes him at least one cup of coffee, but preferably two, to regain full functionality. He hates alarm clocks and he hates deadlines, but he had to set both for today because Luke's not here and he has to get the diner up and running. He checks the clock, and thankfully, there is enough time for another cup of coffee before he has to go downstairs, and he sits quietly and revisits last night again in his mind.

There was laughter and teasing, and he thinks that's a good thing, regardless of the fact that alcohol probably had a lot to do with it - he actually feels he owes a great deal to Paris and the fruit-punch. If nothing else, he owes them because of that moment when she touched him, because of that energy they shared in that moment and the way her eyes looked then, because it allowed him to see things in them that he was afraid he had destroyed forever. Something shifted between them last night, and it feels like they've moved a little closer together, slowly and carefully, but closer nonetheless, and he knows she felt it too, and he hopes that feeling is still there when she wakes up today.

His alone time is up and there's work to be done, so he heads down to the diner, picking up the bag with Rory's clothes on the way, just in case she comes in today, although he doesn't really expect her to. He's pretty sure she'll stay away because things happened last night, and she's Rory, she'll want to analyze them several times over from a dozen angles before she decides what she thinks of them. Once again, he intensely wishes she would sometimes just allow herself to think less and feel more.

The morning is busy and it passes quickly; Luke makes a fish-smelling entrance around noon, looks around quickly and goes upstairs. He returns in fifteen minutes, shaven and showered, pulling on a baseball cap.

"Any prize catches that we can get stuffed and hang on the walls?" Jess asks with a smirk. "You know, maybe if you hang something up around here, Taylor will get off your back with those banners he's been waving around."

"I'm not hanging dead animals on the walls, Jess," Luke shoots back, looking nauseous at the thought alone. "I might hang you up there, though, if I have to ask you again to get over to the cabin and unload that wood that's beginning to grow roots in the back of my truck."

"You were up there all weekend, couldn't you just have done it yourself?"

Luke stops in the doorway and glares at him. "I could have. But that wouldn't have been very good parenting, would it? I asked you to do it, and so, you should do it. And you will, eventually, hopefully before I lose my mind and resort to more desperate measures."

Jess smirks and throws him a suspicious look. "Parenting?"

Luke stops in mid-step and looks at him. "Do you have a better word?"

They stare at each-other for a moment, and Jess is the first one to look away; he just shrugs his shoulders and returns to wiping the counter, but he can't help a small smile although he tries hard to hide it. Luke disappears into the back and Jess can hear him rummaging through the shelves in the storage, but as he comes back out, there's a weird expression on his face and a plastic bag with Rory's clothes dangling off his hand.

"What the hell is this?" he asks, confused.

"Nothing, jus some clothes." Jess reaches for the bag, but Luke moves it away.

"That's a dress in there, Jess."

Jess shrugs. "Yeah, so?"

Luke smirks at him. "Hey, I knew you were different, but I didn't know you were that different; and besides, that color? All wrong for you."

Jess snatches the bag away from him and gives him a murderous look. "You're hilarious. Don't give up your day job." He walks around into the storage room and puts the bag on the shelf, but as he turns around, Luke's leaning in the doorway, his hands crossed on his chest.

"What now? You want to borrow the dress or something?"

Luke shakes his head. "I was away for two days and I come back and find a bag of girl's clothes in my storage room. I'd say that warrants a conversation."

Jess adopts the same posture and leans against the shelf. "Is this you parenting again?"

Luke says nothing.

"Well, although it should really go without saying, for the record, the clothes aren't mine," Jess says, slightly agitated. "They're Rory's."

As the words come out of his mouth, he hears them, and suddenly understands what they sound like and the implications they bring, and instantly, he knows Luke's picked up on it as well because his face changes so fast that Jess only has a moment to register how very threatening it's become.

"Okay, that came out very wrong," he says quickly and suddenly feels very small.

Luke takes a breath. "Just spill, Jess, and do it fast."

Jess shakes his head and relaxes a little. "I went to Hartford to see a movie yesterday. She went to a party and we ran into each-other on the bus. By the time we got into town, it was raining like crazy so we came over here, and waited for Lorelai to come pick her up. We were both soaked so I gave her some of my stuff to put on and she left those clothes in the bathroom."

Luke relaxes and his face slowly returns to normal. "And that's all?"

Jess nods. "That's all." He frowns at Luke. "What did you think happened?"

Luke shrugs. "I have no idea. That's why I asked."

Jess smirks. "Right, that's why," he says. "For a moment there, I thought you were going to kill me or something."

Luke looks at him. "Or something. For a moment, I thought I was too."

They stand in silence for a while, staring at one another again.

"So, are we done?" Jess finally asks.

Luke nods. "Yeah, we're done."

"Good," Jess says and heads past Luke and up the stairs.

"Hey, Jess!" Luke's voice comes again and Jess comes back down a few steps.

"Yeah?"

Luke looks at him. "How did it go?"

"How did what go?" Jess asks, confused.

Luke turns to the shelf. "You and Rory, hanging out", he says over his shoulder.

The question surprises Jess, but it surprises him even more that he doesn't mind Luke asking it. It actually feels kind of good that he wants to know.

"Okay," Jess says quietly. "I think it went okay."

Luke just nods at the shelf and starts unloading a crate of potatoes. Jess smiles to himself and slowly walks up the stairs.

* * *

_A/N: _  
_All writers love reviews, good or bad. They are precious insights into our reader's minds. They usually make us try harder. They often make us get better at what we do. They always motivate us to keep going. They show us what we've done well, what we've done badly and what we could have done differently. Ultimately, they make us happy._  
_Just something to think about :)_


	18. Whatever Happened To That Old Song?

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them. No copyright infringement intended.  
A big thank you goes out to everyone who reads, and a a giant thank you to those who have taken the time to review.

* * *

_Mood music: Rainy Night In Soho, The Pogues_

* * *

**18. Whatever Happened To That Old Song?**

Summer hits hard and hot and Rory finishes _Steppenwolf_ one sultry afternoon in the park. She closes the book and thinks it was a very fitting choice to read about someone who is on a quest to somehow reconcile various pieces of their personality – she can easily relate to that right now.

It's been a few days and no Jess. She hasn't really been avoiding him but she hasn't looked for him either, and somehow this limbo she's in suits her because it gives her time to think and to feel and come to terms with the fact that she may not be ready to let him go. She's still angry, she's still hurt and scared, but somehow, she's not bitter anymore, she's just tired of all the wondering and the guesswork. Taking a deep breath, she pulls another book out of her bag, the book she pulled out of a box in the closet, the book she was sure she would never see again. It looks the same, old, battered and faded, and his name is still on the first page, but it's not the page she's looking for. The familiar chaos takes over her mind again and the rhythm of her heart changes as she prepares to open it, but it all soon feels like the smallest grain of sand in the desert when a shadow falls over her and she knows instantly who it belongs to.

"Hey, " he says softly, settling on the far end of her bench.

"Hi," she replies, not quite daring to look at him.

"So, how are you feeling? Any fruit punch after-effects?" He tries to sound aloof but it's not really working.

She blushes and shakes her head. "No, I'm good." She takes a deep breath and looks at him. "Thanks for that, by the way. I'm sorry if I said… or did…well, anything stupid."

He's surprised, but then he suddenly remembers the touch and wonders if that's what she's referring to. "You didn't. At least not from where I was standing."

She nods and looks out at the lake, quiet and lost in her thoughts. His eyes drift from her face to the book in her hands. He recognizes it instantly and it somehow brings him immense delight to see it in her hands.

"Did you like it?", he asks, grateful for an excuse to break the silence.

She looks back at him, confused. "Like what?"

He points at the book, and her eyes follow; only then, she realizes she's still holding it. She also suddenly realizes the big pink elephant is back, sitting here with them as she remembers what he's written inside the cover.

"Oh, right. Yes, I did, but I feel kind of robbed. It sort of ruined the movie for me."

He smiles. "Yeah, I know, but it's worth it."

She just nods and says nothing, playing with the book absent-mindedly. The silence grows, and the longer it goes on, the harder it gets for him to sit there, so close to her, and watch her remove herself further and further away from him with every moment.

"I'm sorry," she hears him say quietly.

She looks at him, confused again, not understanding what he means. "What are you sorry about?"

He takes a deep breath and tries his best to hold her eyes. "Everything. That I left. That I didn't tell you I was leaving. Most of all, that I didn't tell you why I had to go." As he says the words, he watches the expressions on her face change from confusion to understanding and from there, to anger and fear. Her eyes grow darker and colder, her body grows rigid and he watches her knuckles turn white as she grips the book in her hands tighter.

As she hears the words, she suddenly understands that she's not ready for this conversation because every nerve in her body is telling her to run away, but the same strange force that always comes with being around him keeps her rooted to the spot nonetheless, and so she just sits there, waiting, staring out at the water again because it's just easier to look away.

"I can't do this twisted dance anymore, Rory, I can't do books and music and chit-chat, because it's you, because when I'm around you, this thing happens and I just think there has to be something more." He sighs and looks at her. "I know you're angry, I know I screwed up, but please, you have to let me explain why I did what I did."

"I have to?" Her head turns swiftly and her eyes cut through him with a vengeance. "Why? Why do I have to let you explain anything? Why on Earth should I give you that chance?"

She's staring him down hard but he stares right back. "Because of that one moment a few days ago. Because of that moment when you said that ever since I came back, you thought if you touched me, I'd disappear. Because I know there's still something there, inside you, but you've decided it's just easier to pretend it's not there."

Her expression falters a little but she's not ready to give up. "Those are just moments, Jess, moments when something takes over and I forget myself. But that's just… chemistry, and there has to be more than that." She shakes her head. "I have had all these feelings before. You've had them too. But it wasn't enough." She looks at him. "You still left."

"Rory…"

"You hurt me, Jess, but that's not even the worst part," she cuts him off fiercely. "The worst part is that, no matter what your reason for leaving was, you didn't tell me about it, not then, not later, not ever. You just left."

He sighs and looks at his feet. "I know," he says quietly. "But I couldn't talk about it back then, I couldn't even think about it."

"You could have said goodbye," she says simply.

He smiles sadly and shakes his head. "I could never have left if I had said goodbye to you."

"Then maybe you shouldn't have left at all!" As the volume of her voice raises, she's amazed how little it takes her to start yelling, and she makes a concious effort to sound normal when she talks again. "Maybe you should have just found a way to talk about whatever was in your head. I would have understood. The fact that you felt you couldn't just shows that you didn't trust me, and that hurts."

He looks at her, stunned for a moment. "Of course I trusted you; I don't really think I've ever trusted anyone as much as I trust you. The point is that I didn't trust _me_, my head was in such a mess that I eventually would have hurt you and I couldn't let that happen."

"I doubt you could have hurt me more by staying than you did by leaving", she replies, agitated again.

"Really?" He jumps up from the bench and paces around before he turns back to her, and when he does, his eyes are dark and his face is pale. "Do you remember what happened last time we were together, before I left?"

She swallows and nods her head.

"You tried to get me talk about what was in my head then, and I yelled at you! Then, I put a fist through your closet door! You should have seen your face when I did that, Rory, you were scared of me! Right then, I knew I never wanted to see that look on your face again, and I knew I had to go and deal with all the shit that I'd been carrying around because it drove me insane, and I couldn't be like that anymore, not with you around... All I could think about when I left your house that day is how much worse it could have been and I was scared that next time, it really would be much worse." He takes a breath and looks at her firmly. "You were there. You can't tell me you don't remember what happened and you can't tell me it didn't scare you."

She looks back at him calmly. "It did. But I think it scared you more." She shakes her head and looks out at the lake. "If it's fear you want to talk about, I was more frightened of whatever it was that you wouldn't talk about, of that something that happened to you once that made you close off to me so completely every time I asked about it. As long as you kept that hidden, I felt there was a huge part of you that I didn't know, and that scared me most of all."

He swallows hard and walks back to the bench. "I couldn't talk about that then," he says quietly. "Not because I didn't want you to know about it, but because _I_ didn't want to know about it. I spent every moment since I first came here from New York not wanting to know or think about that stuff, the stuff that happened there, I just wanted to forget it ever happened. But it doesn't work that way; the only way to really put things like that behind you is to face them, and I couldn't do that for a long time. I didn't really have to until you came along and suddenly, you knew me and I couldn't hide the things I wanted to hide anymore but I couldn't tell you about them because if I did, they would somehow become real." He takes a breath and runs his hands through his hair. "And I didn't want them to be real."

Rory just looks at him and says nothing, determined not to ask the question.

"The worst part of it was that I was happy. I was happy with you, but at the same time, I felt guilty for being happy and I felt like I was cheating on you every time you asked a question I couldn't answer. That afternoon, when you saw that scar, all those memories I ignored and wouldn't think about just surged into my brain and I couldn't push them out again and I just lost it. I'd had lost it like that before, but not around you, and that scared me beyond any fear I ever felt before." He takes a breath and shakes his head. "I was scared I would hurt you. I knew I had to either learn how to live with what happened or go insane, and I didn't know which of the two would eventually happen, but I knew I had to figure it out alone." He shrugs his shoulders and smiles at her sadly. "I know that now it seems like an unbelievably selfish decision, and I know that what I'm about to say will sound incredibly self-serving and cliché, but at the time, I really thought you were probably better off without me."

"You're right," she says firmly. "It does sound self-serving and cliché, not to mention lame and stupid."

"I honestly thought you'd just be angry for a while and then forget about me," he mutters quietly.

She looks at him incredulously. "Is that what you wanted? For me to just forget about you?"

He swallows and looks away. "In the beginning, yeah. I thought you deserved better."

"Wow, I hope that helped you sleep at night, being so noble and generous," she snaps sarcastically. "There's only one problem with that logic – if you were so determined to disappear from my life so I could live happily ever after, why did you send those books?"

His face pales and he looks at his feet again. "Because being noble and generous proved much harder than I thought it would be. Honestly, I thought I'd be able to let go of you in time, which was incredibly stupid considering I'd just spent all that time trying to run away from something before I finally realized it couldn't be done. It was the same with you – no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get you out of my head."

"Why didn't you just call, Jess?", she asks exasperatedly. "Why didn't you just call and say something, _anything_?

"I don't know! I didn't want to hear you say you hate me, or have you hang up on me…you'd have every right to do it, but I just wasn't sure I could handle it." He sighs. "It wasn't one of my brightest moments, okay?"

She looks back at the lake and says nothing, wondering what to make of everything she's just heard, confused because it's difficult to distinguish between reason and emotions, and she doesn't know if what he said rings true because it actually makes sense or it only makes sense because she wants it to so badly. If she could shut off her brain for a moment, she would be in his arms instantly because she wants to feel him again so much that it physically hurts, but she has no idea what her brain would say if she could ignore her heart, and somehow, that is still more important.

"What do you want, Rory?" his voice comes softly and she looks at him again. The look in his eyes is gentle and resigned, and she truly believes that in this moment, he will do whatever she asks and she suddenly knows what she wants.

"I want that feeling back, that feeling of happiness and comfort and laughter and joy of being together, that feeling I used to have when I was with you," she says simply. "I want to feel that way again." She looks back at the lake, hugging her legs and resting her chin on her knees.

His heart beats loudly against his chest as her words echo inside his head and he's almost afraid to believe what he just heard. "I want you to feel that way again too," he says quietly. She turns her face towards him and the look she gives him is gentle and searching, but there's still a hint of distance and doubt in her eyes and his heart skips a beat. Slowly, he lifts his hand and gently moves a strand of hair away from her face, somewhat worried she'll recoil at the touch, but she doesn't – she just looks at him and sits perfectly still, and somehow, he doesn't want to move his hand away. He continues to play with that strand of her hair, determined to make the most of this small touch she's letting him have. It is a tiny gesture but she welcomes it, and that makes it enormous.

They sit in silence for a long time, each lost in their own thoughts, feeling the energy between them change. Rory stares at the lake but doesn't see it, she just feels her hair shift slightly as his fingers wrap around its tips and although he's not really touching her, the movement travels over her nonetheless, gentle and strangely comforting, familiar and tantalizing at the same time. She suddenly remembers laying on the sofa through countless movies they'd watched together, and he'd always play with her hair like this, casually, absent-mindedly, until the movie was over or she fell asleep; it's another detail she somehow forgot, but now she remembers it vividly.

"I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive you for leaving like that," she says quietly.

He grows cold but nods his head. "Okay," he says softly. "All I'm asking for now is that you understand why I thought I had to."

"I understand that you obviously thought I couldn't handle who you are," she clips quickly and can't help the sarcasm in her voice, but at the same time, this need to hurt him for no apparent reason disturbs and surprises her.

It's a low blow, but he takes it in stride. "You know who I am," he says simply and lets his fingers gently fall from her hair. "You always knew."

"Parts of you, Jess. I knew parts of you," she says bitterly, searching his face and the frown that forms on his forehead. "Sometimes I think that those parts that I know nothing about are actually the bigger part of who you are."

He looks at her calmly, and it's a solid, unwavering gaze that holds her eyes firmly anchored to his. "I'll tell you everything you want to know, if you're willing to listen," he says sincerely. His gaze never shifts from hers and she knows he means it, but in a weird way, this honesty and willingness to share himself with her now actually bothers her, because it somehow feels long overdue and even extorted. It feels like it's come too late, it cost too much and there's no guarantee that there won't be an even higher price to pay in the future. She suddenly feels angry again, angry that he can sit there so calm and composed while her head spins in circles over everything he'd said in the last hour. It's unfair that she's the one who has to take this giant leap of faith again, put her heart on the line and risk having it break again, it's unfair that she has to make this decision to either let him back in her life or shut him out.

She looks back to the book in her hands and flips it over slowly, opening the back cover. The words are still there and her throat tightens, but her eyes travel over them nonetheless.

_Sometimes I'd wake up in the morning  
The gingerlady by my bed  
Covered in a cloak of silence,  
I hear you talking in my head.  
I'm not singing for the future,  
I'm not dreaming of the past,  
I'm not talking of the first time  
I never think about the last._

_Now the song is nearly over,  
We may never find out what it means;  
Still, there's a light I hold before me,  
You're the measure of my dreams,  
The measure of my dreams…_

"It's from a Pogues song," Jess says in a low voice and stares at the lake in front of them.

"Why did you write this?" she asks breathlessly; she's aware of the anguish in her voice but she's just too far beyond caring how desperate the words sound.

"Because I wanted to write something in every book I sent, but nothing I could think of ever sounded right, and every time I thought of you, this song was in my head, so I finally just wrote it down." He sighs and looks at her. "Because you were always there, Rory, in my head, always, every day, wherever I went and whatever I did, you were there, and I wanted you to know that."

"After six months of nothing, you wanted me to know?" Her voice breaks and she takes a breath. "Do you have any idea how unbelievably painful it was for me to read this?" The color drains from his face and she can see the fear creep into his eyes. "There was nothing, not one word from you for months, and then you write this? You write this when I finally find a way to accept the fact that you're gone and that you're not coming back, and in a second, you just rip me apart all over again."

He looks shocked. "Why?"

"Why?" she repeats incredulously. "Why? Are you serious?" She jumps up from the bench and paces around. "Because there's too much emotion in those words, Jess! Because they don't belong here after you left the way you did and I never heard a word from you for months, and for all I knew, you weren't coming back, and yet, you still write this and it just reminds me of something that's gone forever, and that hurt, it hurt so much that there are no words to describe it!" She's yelling now, and tears are on their way, but she doesn't care. "And through all of that, all I can think about is_ why_, over and over, every day a thousand times, _why_, why you left, why you didn't say anything, why you never called, why you sent those books… there's a million whys in my head, but the worst one is why you wrote this, because as beautiful as they are, they're still just words and words are cheap, Jess!" She shakes her head. "It's what you do that shows how you feel, and everything you did goes against what's written here, and that makes those lines hollow and cruel and untrue!"

He swallows hard and gets up slowly; he walks over to her in a daze, feeling completely defeated, suddenly very conscious that he actually hurt her more by trying to protect her from himself than he would have if he had not protected her at all. He stands in front of her for a minute and searches her eyes, wondering how all that pain somehow just makes her more beautiful.

"I swear to you, everything I wrote in there is true," he says quietly.

She shakes her head. "Again, Jess – just more words," she says with a little smile and looks at him sadly.

Something happens in that moment and he doesn't know if it's because her tone sounds so final or because she looks so sad, because he doesn't know what to say or because it all scares him so much he feels like he's got nothing to lose, but he suddenly reaches out and pulls her to him in one swift movement, and kisses her desperately, like there's no tomorrow, like it's the last kiss on earth. As their lips come together, he feels like his whole body has come alive with vigorous force after being numb for months and the heat spreads in a flash to every fiber of his being. The feeling is overwhelming and he gets lost in it completely; it takes him a while to notice she feels tense and rigid in his arms and to realize she's pushing him away, and suddenly, the fire within quickly turns to panic. He lets go of her instantly and steps away, ashamed and shaken, too horrified to look at her and completely incapable to explain on any level of reason why he just did what he did.

She just stands where he left her, rooted to the spot, frozen and still, listening to her heart beat in that thunderous rhythm that his touch always brings. Her mouth is dry and her brain scrambles to establish control over feelings but it's difficult to do while she can still feel the imprints of his hands on her back and the taste of his lips against hers. Once again, everything inside her turns to confusion and there's blind panic.

"I can't do this," she finally says, shaking her head, breathless and pale. "I can't do this, it's too hard, it hurt too much, these last few months, they just hurt too much, Jess." She can feel the tears coming, but she doesn't care. "I can't let you do that to me again."

"Rory…"

"No," she shakes her head and takes a step back. "No." She dries her eyes and looks at him. "I thought I needed to hear why you did what you did, I thought if I knew, it would hurt less, but really, no matter what you say now and no matter how I feel about it, it won't change the fact that you did it and it won't undo everything I've been through because of it."

"You don't know that", he says quietly, but inside, a chill spreads through him quickly and moments later, it turns to sheer horror as he watches determination and resignation settle in her face, and they are worse, much worse to witness than the anger, sadness or fear he's seen there before. "You don't know that for sure."

"No," she shakes her head again. "No, I'm done."

"Rory, come on, don't do this," he says pleadingly and reaches for her hand, but she pulls it back with such force that it makes her stagger a little.

"No, Jess! I'm done!" She crosses her hands and takes a deep breath."You are much stronger than me, all of this is much stronger than me. If I listen, things might get better, but there's no guarantee for that, is there? They can also get much worse, and having it worse than it's been, I can't even begin to imagine that, I can't handle it, and I don't want to have to."

She gives him another look, one he doesn't recognize because she's never looked at him like that before, and then she turns away from him and it feels like she's turning away forever. Seconds turn into hours in which he watches her walk away, her silhouette getting smaller the more distance she puts between them, until she finally disappears into the trees quietly, like a dream that vanishes in the light of dawn.

* * *

_A/N: _  
**_To all those people who are right now feeling a strong urge to strangle me, pull out my nails or beat me with a bamboo stick - _**_I'm sooooooooorry, but as absolutistic as it sounds, this story is my baby and I need to get it out the way it originally came to be in my head, and in order for that to happen, I needed Rory to be the way she was in this chapter. Please don't hate either of us :)_


	19. What You Break Is What You Get

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them. No copyright infringement intended.  
A big thank you goes out to everyone who reads, and a a giant thank you to those who have taken the time to review.

* * *

_Mood music: Where I Go, Natalie Merchant_

* * *

**19. What You Break Is What You Get**

After many hours of tears and anguish that she spends pacing around her room like a caged animal, there is a unexpected moment of clarity that makes Rory stop in mid-step and carefully consider this new idea that steals into her head, and the more she thinks about it, the more sense it makes, and it amazes her how utterly calm she feels once she realizes what she needs to do. She moves to the bathroom and washes her face, carefully removing any signs of tears and she waits impatiently for Lorelai to come home. When she finally does, Rory lets her unload her day and then slowly lays out what she wants to do.

"Are you out of your mind?" Lorelai asks her, gaping.

"Slightly, yeah," Rory says. "But that has nothing to do with what I just said."

"You can't be serious."

"I'm very serious."

"Why? Why would you want to do something like this?"

"Because, I need some time…"

"Honey, time is everywhere, you can have all the time you need right here!"

"…some time away from everything."

"Still, this is… extreme. It would be extreme for me, but for you, it's like a trip into outer space or something!"

"You're being overly dramatic."

"I'm being overly dramatic? Hello, who is this person I'm talking to and what have you done with my daughter?"

"Overly dramatic again…"

"Rory, this is bizzare, you can't do this. You and me, we're just not cut out for that kind of thing."

"I'll be fine."

Lorelai stares at her. "I can't let you do this."

"Are you going to forbid me?"

"No. I don't do that. I'm just going to talk incessantly until I talk you out of it."

"Well, save your breath. I'm not going to change my mind."

"What brought this on?"

Silence.

"Come on, Rory, if you're going to weird out on me to this extent, I need to know why."

"I just… need to think, I need to figure out how to… implement… some decisions I've made."

"Wow, you make emotional turmoil sound like a business plan that needs rectifying."

"Whatever. I don't really want to talk about it anyway."

"Yes, I've noticed that. Ever since Jess came back, it's like you've turned into a mute."

"This doesn't have anything to do with him."

"Wow again, and now you're lying. This just keeps getting better and better."

"I'm not lying. This is not about him. It's about me."

"It's about you alone or about you in relation to him?"

Silence.

"Okay, fine. Don't talk about it. That'll make it go away," Lorelei sighs.

"I need to do this, Mom."

"Okay, fine, then let's be practical for a moment. What are you going to eat?"

"I'll cook."

"You don't cook."

"Hey, I've taken a class, remember?"

"Rory, you can boil an egg. You've managed to screw up macaroni and cheese."

"Well, I'll just have to get better at it."

"There's no Internet, no television, no radio, no nothing."

"I know; in my head, those are the pros."

"Needing to get away, I can relate to that. But this is taking it a step too far, don't you think? It's practically like... boot-camp, or something along those lines."

"I don't see it that way."

"Clearly not." Lorelai sighs."Why don't you just go over to your grandparents' house?"

"Are you kidding me? The goal here is to keep my sanity, not throw it away."

"They're not there, you know."

"Mom, that house channels Grandma's spirit whether she's there or not."

"Yeah, I wonder how she manages to do that," Lorelai sighs. "I so wish the inn would channel mine."

"Maybe someday."

"Yeah, maybe."

There's a short silence and then Rory looks at her mother again.

"So?"

"So what?"

"Is it okay if I go?"

"I'm really not happy about this, Rory."

"I know. You don't need to be. If you're just, you know, okay with it, I can live with that."

"And if I'm not?"

Rory sighs. "If you're not, it makes it much harder, but I still want to do it."

There's another silence and Lorelai examines her daughter's face.

"I have some stipulations," she says sternly.

Rory smiles. "Okay, let's hear them."

"You pack everything I tell you to pack. No arguments and no exceptions."

"Okay."

"We go shopping for food together. You take everything I want you to take."

"Okay."

"You take the car."

"I don't need it."

"None of this is really negotiable, Rory," Lorelai says. "You take the car. I can use the inn car and I'll feel better knowing you can come home whenever you want – which you will want to do within minutes."

"I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you, but - fine, I'll take the car."

"Your cell-phone stays on at all times. We'll go and get extra batteries, but that thing stays on 24/7."

"Okay, sure."

"You always answer your cell phone. If you can't answer it right away, you call me back or text me within 10 minutes."

"Well, generally, that's not a problem, I just don't know how's the reception."

"Well, you better hope there's reception, because if there isn't, this is not happening."

"I'm pretty sure there's reception."

"Well, we'll check that when I drop you off."

"You're dropping me off?"

"Oh yeah. That has to do with the final stipulation."

"Which is?"

"There have to be people within walking distance. We go and meet the people. If the people are not freaks, then you can stay."

"Oh, that's so sweet and not at all embarrassing."

"That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

Rory rolls her eyes. "I'll take it."

"Good."

Lorelai shakes her head incredulously. "I still can't believe you're actually going to do this," she says, bewildered.

Rory just smiles. "Thanks, Mom."

* * *

_Mood music: Lucky You, The National_

* * *

The ray of sun moves slowly across the floor and Jess stares at its outline; he has no idea how long he's been watching it travel across the room, but it's had his undivided attention ever since he came into the apartment. He first looked at it as he sat on the sofa, and it had been by the bathroom door; in the meantime, he slid to the floor and the ray made its way to the coffee table and became longer in the process, changing its hues from bright yellow to soft orange. He feels numb, and hypothesizes bemusedly that this numbness is probably some kind of defense mechanism that kicks in when inner worlds crumble, a way for the mind to keep functioning when everything else just falls apart. He wonders how long it can last, how long he can sit here like this, feel nothing and stare into that orange outline on the floor and the little clouds of dust that swirl above it.

There are heavy footsteps on the stairs and Luke comes in, looking around. "There you are! Would you please get off your ass, take the bloody truck and unload that wood? Or, you know, do something else, anything else, for that matter; you haven't moved for hours and I'm starting to feel like you're just another piece of furniture that I'll have to dust off."

There's no reaction from Jess and Luke turns away from the papers he's digging through and looks at him a little closer. His face is blank and Luke follows his gaze to the floor, but finds nothing there that would warrant such interest. He walks over and squats in front of Jess, waving his hand in front of his face.

"Hey," he says. "Anyone home?" The eyes don't move and the posture doesn't change. Somewhat worried now, Luke stands up and scratches his head – this is something new. Not something new in general, but something new for Jess and Luke can tell that something big has gone wrong, but how big, he can't tell. After debating the issue in his head for a while, he walks over to the fridge and takes out a six-pack of beer. He walks back to the sofa and settles in the armchair; he then opens a beer, sets it in front of Jess and keeps the other one for himself.

"Hey, snap out of it, Jess!" He leans in and claps his hands in front of Jess's face, and this seems to work – Jess's eyes leave the floor and settle on Luke's face; his expression changes quickly and he rubs his eyes.

"Whatever it is, can it wait?" he asks impassively.

"No, " Luke shakes his head and points at the beer on the coffee table. "You look like you could use one."

Jess looks at the beer, then back at Luke. "Is this some kind of test?"

Luke shakes his head. "No. It's just a beer. Sometimes it helps, but somehow I suspect you know that already."

Jess shakes his head. "A truckload of these won't help me now."

Luke shrugs. "Maybe. But let's just start with the one and work from there."

Jess gives him a vacant look, then reaches for the beer and empties the can. He then looks back to Luke again. "Now what?"

Luke studies him for a moment and remembers being a teenager – everything is always a big drama. He smiles to himself and hands his own can over to Jess and watches him empty that one too. Jess looks up at him and shrugs. "Wow, two beers - I'm all better now," he says sarcastically.

Luke narrows his eyes and looks at him. "Are you sure you want to go down this road? There's likely to be a lot of puking at some point and a severe headache later on."

Jess looks at him blankly. "Thanks for the warning, but it's not my first time."

The challenge floats between them, and they stare at each other for a moment, but then Luke shrugs and reaches into the cupboard behind him. He pulls out a bottle of scotch and sets it on the table.

"If that's really where you want to go, this will get you there much faster," he says simply and leans into the armchair.

Jess looks at the bottle and then he looks at Luke; he's not sure what he expects to find, but all he gets is a mildly interested stare. He goes back to the bottle and opens it, glancing at Luke again, actually expecting him to snatch it away, but Luke just looks at him and sips on a beer. Jess shrugs and takes a sip of his own; the liquid burns his throat and it also shakes him up, and suddenly he's watching her walk away again, and the feelings of panic and chaos return. He takes another swig, and another, and finally, his heart returns to its normal rhythm and he closes his eyes and breathes. For a moment, he forgets about Luke, and when his eyes open again, he's almost surprised to find him still in the armchair, looking at him calmly.

"So, you're just going sit there and watch me get drunk?" Jess asks. "You know, I'm perfectly capable of doing that without a babysitter."

"I'm sure you are, but I'm not going anywhere. I actually can't wait to see how far you're willing to go with this… and, you know, there's always the chance we might have to get your stomach pumped or something later, and I don't want to miss that." Luke shrugs. "Feel free to wallow in whatever misery you're wallowing in though, don't mind me."

"I'm not wallowing," Jess tries to argue, but it's a weak attempt.

Luke rolls his eyes. "Sorry, my mistake. Feel free to contemplate the meaning of life then, or meditate, or whatever the hell it is that you're doing right now."

Jess has nothing to say; he just returns to the bottle and decides to ignore Luke completely. Another silence ensues and Luke watches the expressions change on his nephew's face. He can tell Jess is trying hard not to let them show, but Luke still manages to catch a few, and they become more and more blatant as the bottle gets emptier. They seem familiar, these emotions, and he searches his mind, trying to figure out where he'd seen them before, and he suddenly remembers the scene from a few weeks back, the scene over a kitchen table and cheeseburgers. He's seen the same sadness and pain in Rory's face then, and suddenly he knows what this is about.

"This is ridiculous," comes Jess's voice; the words are somewhat slurred and his eyes are slightly glazed over when he lifts them to meet Luke's. "How long are you going to sit here and stare at me?"

Luke shrugs. "As long as it takes."

"As long as what takes, exactly?"

Luke gives him a patronizing look. "As long as it takes for this meltdown you're having to blow over."

Jess looks at him stubbornly. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Yeah, I'm betting a lot of things would sound real complicated to you right now," Luke says with a sigh.

Jess tries for the trademark dirty look, but fails miserably, so he opts for silent resignation again, but that doesn't really work either, because it's getting harder to keep his act together. Luke watches him as he tries to get a grip; he won't ask questions because he doesn't have to; at this rate, the whole story is going to come out of Jess eventually anyway, so he just sips on his beer and waits.

"This is… ridiculous," comes Jess's voice again, but this time, the words are directed at the floor.

"Yeah, so you've said. You might want to try for a different word next time, because this one's getting old" Luke suggests.

Jess looks up and it's not a pretty look. "If you're so hell-bent on sitting here, then you may as well say something, because with all that sitting and staring, I feel like a lab rat."

Luke shrugs. "I've got nothing to say." He looks at Jess carefully and his tone changes subtly as he continues. "But here's a crazy idea - how about if you talk and I'll listen?"

Their eyes lock together for a moment and then Jess looks away and runs his hands through his hair, leans his head back on the sofa and closes his eyes. Luke watches him slowly come undone, and waits some more.

"I screwed up, Luke," Jess finally says quietly and shakes his head. "I screwed up, but somehow, I was sure I could fix it." He looks at Luke and shrugs, reaching for the bottle again. "And now, for the first time, I actually think that I can't, and I finally get how unbelievably arrogant it was to think that I would somehow find a way to undo all the crap that I've done." He takes another swig and his face cringes.

Luke leans over the table slowly and takes the bottle away from him gently; he sets it on the floor next to his armchair and leans back again.

"We all screw up, Jess."

Jess shakes his head. "Not like this."

Luke says nothing.

"When I left, I really thought that I was doing the best thing I could do at the time," Jess continues quietly. "I would have staked my life on it. I can't believe how wrong I was."

Luke thinks about this carefully. "What makes you think you were wrong?"

"What makes me think I was wrong?" Jess repeats and smiles sadly. "The fact that I miscalculated one crucial detail." He sighs. "I always thought that I could explain why I felt I had to leave. I always knew that if I did, Rory would… I know she would understand. What I didn't factor in is the possibility that she would not even want to listen." He laughs, but it's an anxious, nervous sound. "And she doesn't. She doesn't want to listen. She doesn't want to know. She doesn't want to care and she is so determined about it, Luke, I've never seen such determination. It's scary, and it's so very final that right now, the only way that I could get her to hear me is to tie her up, gag her so she can't scream and then talk, which I'm pretty sure constitutes at least assault."

Jess looks at Luke and for the first time, makes no attempt to disguise or hide anything, and there's such blatant despair in his face that it makes Luke rethink his earlier conclusion – there's no drama here, this is for real.

"Maybe you need to give it some time, Jess."

Jess shakes his head. "Time, that's a funny thing. I give her some time, and maybe she'll come around. Or, I give her some time, and she uses it to move on, and bury whatever feelings she has left so deep that it becomes impossible to get in touch with them again." He closes his eyes and rubs his face again.

"Did that work for you?" Luke asks quietly and Jess cringes. "You've buried things before, you know how that eventually plays out."

Jess nods. "Yeah, but it's not the same. I don't know how long I could have done that. Maybe I would still be doing it if it wasn't for her. Maybe I could have done it forever."

Luke looks at him sadly. "Then maybe you should just let it go."

Jess turns away. "I can't do that," he says quietly. "For months, I've tried to do that, and I just can't do it."

There's nothing left for Luke to say to that, because there's such defeat in the tone of that last sentence that he knows it's a universal truth, like the fact that water is wet or that snow is white. He knows he should think of something smart or comforting to say, but nothing comes to mind, and suddenly he remembers Lorelai and thinks she would be so much better at handling this. He doubts that getting a teenager drunk is a widespread parenting method. He looks at Jess again, and watches him stare into space, wondering where to go from here. Suddenly he notices a notebook on the coffee table, and it's unfamiliar, he doesn't remember seeing that around the apartment before. It looks beaten and old, it's messy and papers and things are sticking out of it. It makes for a good conversation piece, and hopefully, a much needed distraction.

"Where did this come from?" he asks and points to it.

Jess looks startled for a second, but then follows Luke's finger. He reaches for the notebook.

"That's mine," he says and turns it over in his hands.

"What is it?"

Jess thinks about it for a moment. "It's… well, in a weird way, it's me, I guess." He looks at Luke and he's clearly not getting it. "I wrote stuff in here when I was away. It sort of helped me keep my sanity," he says, remembering. "You know, when I felt I was getting unhinged, I'd write it all down to get it out of my system, get some perspective. Strange as it sounds, it worked."

Luke nods. "So, in a sense, that's the stuff you needed to deal with, written in there?"

"Yeah, basically."

"Those are the things that Rory should know then?"

Jess suddenly realizes where Luke is going with this and his face pales. No one is supposed to read what's written in there. He shakes his head. "No, she can't read this."

"Why not?"

Jess doesn't know how to explain it; there are thoughts in there that are just too raw and brutal for her to see, there are some memories that he'd rather keep to himself, there are weaknesses that she doesn't need to know about. It's one thing to talk her through the things she deserves to know and a very different thing to let her come face to face with it all in this uncensored version of himself. It's too harsh, too honest, too frightening and too naked to be experienced by anyone other than him. Sometimes, when he reads through it himself, he feels like he should probably find a suitable institution and check himself in.

"She just can't. No one can," Jess says firmly and throws the notebook back on the table.

Luke looks at it for a long time and says nothing.

……………….

Lorelai walks across the square in the general direction of the diner; as she turns around the gazebo, she runs into Luke.

"Hey," she says and smiles. "I was just coming to find you."

"Yeah, me too," he says and looks around. "I need to ask you a favor. It may sound strange."

She nods and sighs. "Yeah, I have one too, and I'll bet you anything mine trumps yours by a mile."

* * *

_A/N: _  
_All writers love reviews, good or bad. They are precious insights into our reader's minds. They usually make us try harder. They often make us get better at what we do. They always motivate us to keep going. They show us what we've done well, what we've done badly and what we could have done differently. Ultimately, they make us happy._  
_Just something to think about :)_


	20. Growing Older

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them. No copyright infringement intended.  
A big thank you goes out to everyone who reads, and a a giant thank you to those who have taken the time to review.

* * *

_Mood music: One Flight Down, Norah Jones_

* * *

**20. Growing Older**

Solitude is a blessing. Rory realized this the moment the tail-lights of Lorelai's car disappeared behind the trees, and it's a thought she came back to several times over the last few days, and as she curls up in the hammock now and lets her eyes drift over the water, she confirms it once again. This is the first time in weeks she feels truly calm and true to herself, and ever since that feeling came, she can breathe easily again, she feels safe and unafraid inside her own head, she feels composed and familiar and finally, she recognizes this inner world as her own, as a world she's known before and felt comfortable in. She's very certain that this serenity comes from being utterly alone, and she needs the solitude and the composure it brings to be able to search her heart like it needs to be searched, honestly and without restraint, unrelated to the chaos that is her mind.

At first, she does this carefully, taking little peeks and occasional glances when she does something else, like when she tries to figure out how the stove works or when she reads the instructions on the macaroni and cheese box or when she burns the incense that is supposed to deter mosquitoes (which she soon learns is a lost cause). Once she escapes these little expeditions into her feelings unscathed, she dares to prolong them and lets the emotions she discovers wash over her freely, unhindered by reason or logic. She's surprised how much of a mystery her heart is, and how many different nuances it holds, how many feelings, and how different those feelings are when they are experienced instead of thought through.

The sun sets and the mosquitoes threaten to eat her alive, but she just pulls her hands deeper into her sweatshirt, and as she watches the colors of the world around her change, she feels herself change with them. The girl that came here a few days ago somehow gets left behind, and she can feel herself growing up – not all the way, but a little, just enough to understand some truths about life, truths that are universal and, she suspects, haven't changed since the beginning of time.

The first truth that presents itself is that emotions are much stronger than logic, and in a duel between heart and mind, the heart always wins. Unconditionally. The second truth she discovers is that in order for her to be truly happy, the heart needs to come first. The third truth is that there are no guarantees of happiness, there are just opportunities to pursue it, and it's very likely that they don't come by too often or stick around very long. On an intellectual level, these truths are not new to her – she's encountered them in books and music and movies, but she had never felt them before, not as her own, not inside her heart. They were concepts, not experiences, and when they became experiences, they were so strong that they were frightening, and she pushed them away, but here and now, that fear is vanishing and it becomes ridiculous to think it was ever there, because she realizes this is not something to be feared, it's something to be treasured.

Jess has known this all along, she suddenly realizes and instantly feels ashamed for being so clueless. He's probably always known it, and she wonders if that's what always made her feel like he's one step ahead of her, understanding things that she had not yet even began to grasp. She contemplates this for a while, without really realizing he's found his way into her head again, and by the time she becomes aware of it, he's settled there already but his presence doesn't scare or anger her anymore – those feelings are so far removed now that she finds it hard to believe they ever really existed. Maybe they hadn't, not really.

There's a rush of wind over the porch and her hammock swings gently, calling her back to the world, shrouded in darkness now. She leaves the hammock and tiptoes inside where she finds a paraffin lamp and lights it. She then finds a pair of socks and pulls them on before she returns to the doors and locks them. She doesn't know what time it is, but she quickly remembers time is irrelevant here and she decides to make some coffee, and if it keeps her up all night, so be it. She finds a mug and boils some water on the little camp cooker that Lorelai insisted on buying and that proved to be a life-saver once the massive stove turned out to be too great a challenge. She sits down on the bed and smells the coffee, and it's a smell that reminds her of home, pleasant and comforting, and her heart returns to Jess again.

It's simple and easy to think about him now, like it was before he left, and she thinks of him like she did then, wondering where he is and what he's doing, picturing him immersed in a book somewhere, oblivious to the world around him. The image floats around her head for a while, but then she remembers how she walked away from him, she remembers the things she said and for the first time, she hears them as he heard them. It suddenly slaps her in the face in full force just how very cruel she's been, how very, very unfair and how very backwards she's had it all, and how much she must have hurt him, in many ways maybe even more than he hurt her. It hits her that she's made them both miserable simply because she was too scared to be honest with herself, and it seems so stupid now, so stupid and pointless and childish. Like a spoiled brat, she's been so self-centered and juvenile that she'd actually flat-out refused to even listen to him, she'd just shot him down and shut him out, and somehow, inexplicably, he kept coming back for more and trying again.

"I'm an idiot," she whispers to the mug in her hands. "I'm beyond stupid. There's not even a word to describe how stupid I am."

It's a nightmare of a different kind, facing your own stupidity, she thinks and sets the coffee down. She's so mortified by the way she's been behaving that she literally wants to pull on her hair and scream, but she knows it won't help. She needs to make this right somehow and as she paces around the room, she decides she's going home tomorrow, she has to explain to him that she now knows how unbelievably stupid she's been, she has to tell him that she's sorry and that she's ready to listen, and to actually hear what he has to say. It helps her calm down a bit, this resolution, and she sits down and catches her breath again before she returns to thoughts of him.

She's ready to listen and finally, it's for the right reasons – it's not out of curiosity or the need for closure, it's not even because she expects or hopes for any great break-throughs to come out of it anymore, it's simply because she feels she owes them both at least that much, she owes them because of that bond that they will always share that is unusual, extraordinary and maybe happens only once in a lifetime. She can't explain it, this energy that exists between them, just like she can't name or pinpoint that elusive quality in him that holds such enormous power over her. He just gets her, plain and simple, and he doesn't even have to try, it just happens, it's there, it's always been there, just like she's always been able to connect with him, even when no one else could. Regardless of what happens after that conversation, she knows now that will never change, that this bond is theirs forever, and it's surreal how calm and peaceful this knowledge makes her feel.

The window slams shut and she winces, suddenly aware of the wind howling outside and the heavy drops of rain beating against the panes. She gets up and bolts it, and then does the same with the rest of them, secretly hoping for a thunderstorm; it would somehow just fit the atmosphere tonight because there is so much change in the air. She returns to the bed and suddenly, she feels the urge to read and she smiles to herself, relieved - she hadn't felt like reading anything ever since she arrived here, and the fact that the desire is back just confirms to her that everything is right with the world again.

She turns over on her stomach and reaches under the bed, pulling out a suitcase; it's packed with books and it took a lot of hard work to get it in here. She unzips it and begins digging through it, waiting for her hands to land on a cover that will feel right, but in the midst of all the books, she finds a plastic bag that she doesn't remember packing, and she pulls it out, confused and surprised, wondering how it got in there. The bag is white and completely unremarkable, and she reaches inside curiously. The moleskine comes out unceremoniously, without a drum-roll or fanfare, it just appears, and on some absurd and totally bizarre level, it makes perfect sense to her that it's here, and that she discovered it in this very moment. A soft warmth spreads inside her because she understands that's a piece of him she's holding in her hands, and she handles it with care and affection. She sits up and settles comfortably, with her legs crossed under her, and places the moleskine in her lap. She runs her hand over it absent-mindedly before she lifts it up to her face and she smiles – it smells of Jess and of paper, but as she brings it up, things start falling out of it and suddenly her lap is full of postcards. She lays the notebook down and she drops the paper bag on the floor, but she suddenly notices there is something else inside and she reaches for it again and pulls out a note.

"_Hey hon, I'm sorry if this has upset you, but Luke made me promise I'd get it to you."_

Rory frowns. Luke? That doesn't make any sense.

"_He also made me promise not to look inside, which was a massive test for both my morals and curiosity, but I'm proud to report that I passed with flying colors. Sorry I can't shed any more light on this – all Luke said was that I should get it to you, and I'm assuming this has something to do with Jess, but I also have a distinct feeling that Jess doesn't have a clue this thing is about to land in your hands. _

_I hope you're not starving to death,_

_Mommy loves you :) __"_

Rory smiles, puts the note away and looks at the notebook in front of her. Jess didn't send this, Luke did. Leaving Jess aside for a while, she thinks that the fact Luke wanted her to have this is odd, not to mention that he apparently did it behind Jess's back, which makes the whole thing even odder. She can't even begin to figure out why he did it, so she lets it go for now and turns her attention to the postcards in her lap. She picks them up one by one and looks at them, discovering they are all of cities and towns, some of which she knows and some she's never heard of. There's nothing written on them except dates, and she realizes soon that they tell a story of where he's been. As she goes through them, she follows the windy road he's travelled tentively, but soon she comes across something else. For a second she thinks it's just a random, old piece of paper because it's thin and it's developed that yellowish tint, but as she turns it over, her heart stops and her breath catches in her throat when she sees it's actually a paper napkin, the one that she outlined her hand on such a long time ago.

She stares at it for a moment, and a moment is all it takes for this napkin to tell her everything she ever needed to know, it tells her more about him than reading that Moleskine ever could; within seconds, tears are coming down her face and a feeling of unbelievable joy comes with them, and it's so overwhelming that she wants to jump up and dance and sing because she feels more alive in that one moment than she ever did in her whole life. She laughs out loud and wipes her eyes, looking at that simple, plain little napkin, so thin and so used, and that silly drawing she put there, still incredulous that he held on to it all this time, that he held on to her, but most of all, deliriously happy that it's found her and that she now knows his heart completely, inside and out, and that she knows she can trust him with her own.

Catching her breath as the tears slowly stop, she opens the moleskine and puts the postcards back inside; it takes her a while longer to part with the napkin, but eventually she puts it back as well. She closes the notebook and puts it on the floor. She's not going to open it again – she doesn't need to. If he wants her to know what's inside, she'll let him tell her himself. She shuts off the lamp and curls up under the blankets, peaceful and happy, thoroughly aware she's still precious to him, and that she always was, overjoyed that she finally found this tiny piece of proof of his affection that goes beyond words. For a while, she listens to the rain beat against the window panes before its rhythm carries her off to sleep.

* * *

_Mood music: Soldier Of Fortune, Deep Purple_

* * *

Jess curses under his breath as he squints at the windshield, trying to make out shapes and sizes through a thick curtain of rain. _A brilliant idea to do this now, Mariano_, he says to himself as he tries to make out the road and the holes in it. He manages to avoid a few, but then the rain comes down harder, and driving becomes an impossible and dangerous mission, and so he pulls over to the side of the road and sinks back into the seat, waiting for the rain to stop.

Being stuck alone with nothing to do is exactly what he's been trying hard to avoid over the last few days, because being alone with his thoughts is the last thing he needs right now, and sitting here in the darkness, stuck in a middle of nowhere, is the last place in the world he wants to be. The radio hums softly in the background, and the song that's playing hits just a little too close to home, but he can't bring himself to turn it off, so he just stares out into the rain and listens, watching her face slowly form in his mind's eye.

… _I feel I'm growing older, and the songs that I have sung, echo in the distance…_

She's gone and he has no idea where she is. Nobody offered the information, and he didn't ask because he's not sure he really wants to know anyway. Maybe it's better he doesn't know where she is or when she's coming back; maybe it's time to get used to the idea that this is actually what happens next, which is – nothing. The word itself sounds just as empty and hollow as the concept it describes, but maybe it's time to consider it, regardless of the giant emptiness that forms within him when the thought crosses his mind. It just feels so very wrong on so many levels, this prospect of nothing, of her not being a part of his life, that it is near impossible to think about, even on a hypothetical level. He makes himself do it anyway, and in one horrible minute, he feels completely stripped of everything meaningful, valuable and precious to him, and it's like all the lights inside him have gone out and there's nothing left, nothing but memories of her, memories of things he knows he can never have again. Just the idea of this nightmare becoming reality is enough to make him completely lose his bearings as it becomes painfully clear that life would just lose all meaning and turn into a slow procession of pointless days that lead nowhere, and being forced to deal with that notion makes the hell he went through in the last few years seem miniscule in comparison. It only takes a second for another thought to strike, and suddenly he understands that this is what it must have been like for her when he left, and for the first time, with his eyes wide open, he stares straight into the vast abyss of pain he pushed her into.

… _but those days I thought my eyes had seen you standing near; though blindness is confusing, it shows that you're not here…_

The feeling of guilt that follows immediately is so overpowering that his mind shuts down for a moment, unable to process it, and he just stares straight ahead for a while, waiting for his senses to come back. They return gradually, but he soon appreciates that he was much better off without them, because each brings a deeper understanding of what her world was like after he left, and soon, he feels nauseous. It strikes him clearly just how presumptuous and arrogant he's been these last few weeks, how completely blind to the full volume of what he's put her through, and suddenly her behavior makes perfect sense. She's been gathering pieces of that pain for months, some smaller, some greater, and she used them to build a wall that she felt safe behind, and just as she finished it, he came at it like a cannonball with that last book, and it crumbled around her, leaving her vulnerable and exposed again, and it's no wonder she ran.

She may never stop running, he realizes sadly, and maybe it's time he let her go if that's what she wants to do. Maybe the damage he did is really too great to undo, and maybe too many pieces got lost along the way for him to be able to put back together what he has broken. Maybe it's just not meant to be, maybe it really is better for both of them to just settle for nothing.

…_I can hear the sound of a windmill going 'round… I guess I'll always be a soldier of fortune…_

The song ends and the spell is broken by an annoying voice that recites the scores from a basketball game, and Jess shuts the radio off and looks outside. It's still raining, but now it's a light drizzle, and he takes a breath and tries to ignore the heavy feeling of loss that settles over him, wondering if it's something that is here to stay. It probably is, but he can't deal with it now, so he just acknowledges it and starts the truck. The engine hums and he puts it into gear and pushes on the gas pedal; the truck jerks but it doesn't move. Jess slams his foot on the gas pedal again; he can feel the wheels turning, but once again, the truck doesn't move. Realizing slowly that this could turn into a serious problem, he curses under his breath and gets out. He slams the door and begins inspecting the wheels, and it soon becomes apparent that he's not going anywhere because he either managed to pull over into a foot deep puddle of mud, or the puddle came into existence afterwards, courtesy of the earlier downpour. Either way, the truck is stuck, and he is stuck with it, and for the first time, he grudgingly admits that there are perhaps some advantages to owning a cell-phone. As the predicament he is in fully presents himself, he furiously kicks the offending wheel, and although it brings a certain amount of satisfaction, it also affords him a sore foot and an ankle deep mud stain on his jeans. He blows off steam for a few more minutes, but gradually becomes resigned to his fate and digs out a flash-light from the glove compartment. He flashes the light around, trying to determine where he is exactly and how far he has to walk, and feels a little better when he figures out it's actually not that far. He locks the truck, pulls the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, turns on his mp3 player and starts walking.

………………

Rory's dreams are invaded by the creaking of the floorboards on the porch, and as her eyes fly open, the sound is quickly followed by footsteps. She scrambles out of bed and reaches for the flashlight, but decides against turning it on. Her heart beats frantically as she stares at the window and discerns a shape moving outside, and the fear that washes over her makes her freeze for a moment as her mind hectically processes dozens of scenarios and examines the pros and cons of each. There's silence for a moment and she stands still, but then comes the sound of a key being pushed into the lock, and she lunges for her back-pack and pulls out a bug spray, another one of Lorelai's purchases, originally intended for defense against unsuspecting wildlife. She just has time to grab it and scramble over to the door when she hears the key turn. She raises the container to eye-level, firmly gripping the flashlight in the other hand, figuring she'll flash first and spray second, when a tiny voice in her head points out that burglars or other predators usually don't carry keys to the houses they're breaking into. Although the thought brings some hesitation, she doesn't have time to explore the logic of it further, because the door opens quickly and she instantly reverts to her original plan. As the unsuspecting head appears behind the door, she turns the flashlight on and shines the fluorescent light directly into the intruder's eyes. The bug spray fals to the floor with a clank when she realizes that those are eyes that she knows, and for a moment, she feels so relieved that she almost drops to the ground, but the moment is over quickly, and instead, she hits him in the chest with the flashlight, furious he gave her such a deathly scare.

"Jess, you idiot," she shrieks. "You almost gave me a heart attack! What the hell are you doing here?"

He flinches first at the punch she delivers, and then again when she screams at him, but then he turns on a flashlight of his own and points it at her face. Now it's her turn to squint, and he just gapes at her like he's seen a ghost. It takes him a small eternity to find his voice again. "Rory?"

* * *

_A/N: _  
_All writers love reviews, good or bad. They are precious insights into our reader's minds. They usually make us try harder. They often make us get better at what we do. They always motivate us to keep going. They show us what we've done well, what we've done badly and what we could have done differently. Ultimately, they make us happy._  
_Just something to think about :)_


	21. Giving Into Old Temptation

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them. No copyright infringement intended.  
A big thank you goes out to everyone who reads, and a a giant thank you to those who have taken the time to review.

* * *

_Mood Music: Perfect Circle, Katie Melua_

* * *

**21. Giving Into Old Temptation**

"Yes, Rory, that's still my name!" Her heart is still beating like crazy, she's not in full control of the volume of her voice yet and she suddenly realizes how shrill it sounds. "And you didn't answer me, what the hell are you doing creeping around here in the middle of the night?"

He just stares at her and it takes him a moment to remember she's asked him a question. "Umm, I was just coming up here when that biblical shower happened and…wait a minute," he suddenly stops in mid-sentence as his brain begins to work. "What am _I_ doing here? This is Luke's fishing sanctuary, what's your excuse?"

"Luke knows I'm here", she says and waves the flashlight around, and he takes a quick step back.

"Okay, can you just put that thing down before you take my eye out or something," he says and takes it from her.

With the flashlight gone, she doesn't really know what to do with her hands so she just crosses them on her chest and looks up at him. "What are you doing here, Jess?" she asks again, and feels relieved to hear that her voice sounds normal.

"Luke's been bugging me for weeks to take some wood up here, and I finally decided to do it, but then I had to pull over because of the rain, and then the truck got stuck, and so I had to walk for half an hour," he says and it suddenly hits him he must have scared her pretty bad. "Sorry if I scared you", he adds quickly. "I had no idea you were here."

She just nods and they look at each other, although it's difficult to really see anything with only the small circle of light from flashlight in his hand dancing over the floorboards, but they are both grateful for that as they begin to grasp the situation they're in, alone in this little house, in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of night, with rain beating softly against the windows. As the reality of it all sinks in, they both feel the atmosphere change and the energies shift, creating that familiar, intense sphere around them that is invisible to the eye, but all the more real and tangible to other senses. They stand there a long time, getting used to each other slowly, carefully, unsure how to move or where to go, how to act and what to say, each painfully aware how badly they left things that awful day at the park. Jess plays with the flashlight, wondering if maybe he should just go and return to that stupid truck, shut himself in it and beat his head against the dashboard for losing control so stupidly the last time he saw her, and Rory just silently thanks the universe for bringing him here as she follows the light on the floor with her eyes, trying to figure out how to let him know she's not going to bite his head off if he speaks again. The light one the floor moves around their feet and in a small reality check, she suddenly realizes that Jess is dripping. Grateful to be presented with a practical issue that she can resolve easily, she feels tremendous relief wash over her and her thoughts race over one another to get the words out.

"I have clothes," she announces suddenly and cringes immediately. Of course that the version that left her mouth would be the one to make her sound like a retard. _I have clothes? _

Jess rethinks this several times over before he gives up. "Okay, I really don't know what to do with that sentence," he says sincerely and watches her cover her eyes and shake her head.

"Yeah, I know, sorry." She takes a breath and tries again. "What I meant to say was that I have clothes for you to wear, if you want to change." She points at his pants. "You're dripping."

The idea sounds reasonable enough and thankfully, the screeching is gone and since he really doesn't want it to come back, he decides that the best course of action right now would be to do whatever she wants. "Yeah, okay."

"I'll just go and turn the lamp on," she says quietly and walks over to the table. It gets a little easier to breathe when she puts some distance between them, but her hands still shake as she turns on the lamp. She then goes to her back-pack and starts pulling out clothes until she finds the same sweatpants he'd given her to wear after the fruit-punch fiasco. As she hands them to him, she registers a look in his eyes, a look that says he's surprised she has those with her, and she blushes furiously. "I packed in a rush, so I just threw those in there with everything else that was on my bed at the time", she says quickly, unsure why she's lying, but determined to do it anyway.

He just takes the pants from her slowly, then he takes off his hoodie and smiles. "And what about that?" he points at the sweatshirt she's wearing and kicks off his sneakers. "Did you put that on by mistake too?"

The words take a moment to sink in, and then she remembers that the sweatshirt is his as well and she thinks that universe really has a twisted sense of humor and somehow, she seems to be on the receiving end of it tonight. She hadn't even looked at this stupid sweatshirt for days, and of course he'd show up here the first evening she puts it on. She tries to think of a more or less graceful exit, or at least of a semi witty comeback, but it soon becomes a minor issue as she watches his shirt come off. As he gets started on his jeans, the room seems to shrink to the size of a photo-booth and all the air gets sucked out of it, and she stands there like an ice sculpture, staring, aware that she should turn away but completely unwilling and unable to do it until he looks up and it suddenly becomes more important to hide her eyes and everything in them from his gaze. She turns around quickly and begins putting the clothes she pulled out earlier back into her backpack, not allowing her eyes to wonder at all and hiding her face until she's able to get these feelings under some semblance of control. Her heart slowly returns to a more or less normal rhythm, the heat mercifully retreats from her face and when she decides he's had enough time to put those sweatpants on several times over, she turns around again and watches him move his shoes out of the way and dry his hear with the shirt he just took off. The scene is only slightly less intense than the previous one, and she knows she needs to get him fully clothed if she wants to have any chance to keep her head straight, so she just peels off the sweatshirt she's wearing and throws it over to him.

Although it comes as a surprise, Jess manages to catch the shirt, but suddenly has no idea what to do with it, he doesn't even remember what it is or what it's for because now she's standing a few feet away wearing just her pajama bottoms and the smallest tank top ever made, and it's enough to completely strip him of all conscious thought, logic and reason, and that's not good, because this space is just too small to allow full reign to those feelings; the last time he let that happen, it ended so badly that the memory of it serves as a welcome cold shower right now. Although it takes an enormous amount of will and self control, he looks away from her and focuses on the sweatshirt in his hands.

"You didn't have to do that, I'm sure Luke has some shirts around here," he says quietly and tries his best to keep his tone casual.

Rory shrugs and gives him a small smile. "That's okay, I have other clothes."

"Yeah, so you've mentioned," he smirks and pulls the sweatshirt on. It's warm and it smells like her, and it's the sweetest fragrance he can imagine. He watches her silently as she finds a long cardigan and wraps herself in it, tying the belt loosely, and he thinks how unbelievably good it feels to be able to just look at her as she does these small, unremarkable things. When she's done, she turns and faces him again, and as they look at each other across the room, they both feel weirdly relieved, like they had passed some vague test in the last few minutes or had taken a first in a long line of steps in a dark place but somehow still managed to land on safe ground again.

The silence is unnerving and Rory feels it widens the gap between them, the gap she knows now that she wants to close, and she feels the need to somehow learn to just act normal around him again, as normal as she can be in such a small space that's packed with so much tension, so she looks for another practical issue to address, and this time, her own stomach offers one, reminding her it's been hours since she'd eaten.

"Are you hungry?" she asks with a smile.

Food being one of the last things on his mind right now, it takes him a while to process the question. "I could eat," he says and smiles back. "What have you got?"

"Well, nothing right now, but I can make something," she says brightly and moves to the kitchen part of the room where she starts opening the cupboards and pulling out dishes.

He follows and leans against the counter. "Make something?" he repeats incredulously. "You can't cook to save your life. I've seen you turn macaroni and cheese into a murder weapon."

She rolls her eyes at him. "You sound like my mother."

He smirks and shrugs. "Well, she should know."

She gives him a dirty look as she takes a cutting board and some tomatoes to the table. "Do you have to work hard at being obnoxious or does it just come naturally?" she asks, but he just smiles and she shakes her head. "Never mind, don't answer that."

She returns to the counter and fills a dish with water; she then takes it back to the table and starts the little camp cooker. Jess turns around and rinses his hands, then joins her by the table where he picks up a knife and a tomato.

"What do you want me to do with these?", he asks with a smile.

"Just cut them up, I thought we'd make a salad," she says and walks over to the cupboard again, and returns with a bowl, a cucumber, a can of tuna, some garlic and a bag of pasta.

As instructed, he busies himself with the tomatoes and watches her dump the pasta into the dish as the water inside it boils. She manages to do it from a slightly greater height than she needs to, and he can't suppress a smile as he watches her jump away slightly from the dish as drops of water shoot over the edge, but she recovers quickly and finds a ladle, then stirs the pasta slowly. He's so completely focused on what she's doing that he forgets about the tomatoes for a moment and he just watches her reach for the garlic and begin to peel it when her eyes lift suddenly and she looks at him.

"What?" she says with a challenge in her voice.

"Sorry?" he says, confused at her tone.

"You're staring at me," she says, exasperated. "Is there a better way to peel garlic that I'm not aware of?"

He chuckles. "No, sorry, you're doing fine."

Slightly surprised at the absence of sarcasm in his voice, she shakes her head and smiles. "Okay, well then, please stop staring and keep your mind on that knife before you take your finger off or something, because I'm really bad with blood."

"Sure," he says with a smile and returns to the tomatoes, but he keeps track of what she's doing nonetheless, because he's suddenly aware that he really is hungry and cooking was never one of her strong suits, but she seems to really have improved – she knows to turn the flame on the cooker down as the pasta threatens to boil over, and she even remembers to add a little olive oil into the water so that the noodles don't stick together. She goes back to the cupboard and returns with another cutting board, this one destined for the garlic, and she goes on to chop it carefully into small pieces.

"So, what is this gastronomical delight you're making, anyway? Does it have a name?" he asks casually and she gives him a quick glance, trying to determine if he's teasing her or not. Her face shows it because he smiles and adds quickly, "I'm not making fun of you, I actually want to know."

She smiles and shrugs. "It doesn't have a name, it's just something that can be whipped up from things that don't require refrigeration," she says simply. "And you know, it doesn't even taste horrible, and that's always a bonus."

He nods and dumps the sliced tomatoes in a bowl, then reaches for the cucumber. Having finished with the garlic, she picks the same moment to go after the cucumber as well, and as both their hands close over it, the touch catches them both off guard and for a moment, neither can move; they just stand still and experience it quietly, trying to control their heartbeats and their breaths, completely thrown off balance again by the sudden reappearance of that weird force that comes into existence every time they touch, that force they thought they had sidestepped once tonight already, and it just goes to show them how wrong they were to think it was something they had any control over. It stretches, this moment over the cucumber, and slowly it threatens to grow into something meaningful that will have to be discussed if allowed to go on, and neither of them wants to do that yet, not now, not when they are just beginning to feel normal around each other again.

"Should we each just take half?" Jess suggests with his eyebrows raised and half a smile, and Rory is happy that she can just laugh at this, grateful that he found an easy way out of that crazy maze of tension that nearly swallowed them again.

"That's okay, you keep the cucumber and I'll get the tuna ready," she smiles and takes the can over to the sink where she turns it out into the colander and lets the oil drain. She steals the moment to regain some composure and shake that touch off before she takes some parsley leaves out of the glass on the widow-sill and returns to the table where she chops them up as she watches Jess struggle with the cucumber.

"I think you got the better part of the deal here," he complains as he tries his best to peel the skin of the cucumber with only moderate success. "I don't think there'll be much of this left to actually eat once I get the skin off."

She laughs and her eyes sparkle as she looks at him. "Oh come on, diner boy, don't tell me you've never peeled a cucumber before!"

He frowns. "I have, but there are specific tools for this kind of thing, you know. Shocking as it may sound, there are actually dozens of different types of knives in the world, one of which is intended for this particular type of vegetable, and trust me, this one I'm using here is nowhere near up to the task."

"Yeah well, consider it a challenge," she suggests seriously. "Once you tackle it, you'll emerge a better person."

He throws her an ugly look and she laughs, but stifles it quickly and checks the pasta again. It's done and she takes it over to the sink, drains the water and rinses it out before she adds it to the tuna. She returns them both into the pasta dish, takes it back to the table and throws in the garlic and parsley before she stirs it all together. It smells and looks great, although Jess is not sure if that's because he's really hungry, because she made it or because it actually does smell good. He hurries up and has the cucumber sliced by the time she returns with the plates, and she takes over the salad seasoning while he fills the plates with pasta. The cooker gets moved to the counter and the cutting boards and knives dumped into the sink, and finally, they're ready to eat, and both decide it's not one moment too soon.

Several moments go by in silence and Rory watches him take a mouth-full intently, worried he won't like it and annoyed with herself that it matters so much that he does.

"This is really good," he finally says and she relaxes in her chair and feels ready to eat herself. He smiles at her and continues innocently, "with a little bit of practice, you'll make an excellent housewife someday."

Her face drops and a murderous look enters her eyes, and he smiles at her widely; she blushes and looks away, amazed how easy he can make her flare up, and how she falls for it every time.

"Just shut up and eat, Mariano," she says with a small smile and takes her vengeance on an unsuspecting tomato slice. "Don't make me sorry I didn't bug-spray you."

"Well, on some level, it would have been interesting if you did," he smirks. "The consequences would probably have been fun."

She puts her fork down and glares at him. "How would could there possibly be anything fun about that?"

He smirks and shrugs his shoulders. "Well, there would have been a serious guilt trip on your part – those are usually fun. Then you might have fawned over me a little, which I know would have been fun. Then…"

"I wouldn't have fawned over you!" she cuts him off determinedly.

He shrugs and smiles. "Sure you would."

"I don't fawn, Jess," she says, slightly agitated. "And if you don't believe me, the bug spray is still there and I'll be happy to fog you once we're done eating."

He smiles. "That's okay, I'd rather stick to my fantasy version of events. It's much nicer," he says with a chuckle and although he's rattled her, the smile just takes it all away again.

"You're insufferable sometimes, you know that?" she asks with half a smile and returns to her pasta.

"Maybe I'm just nervous," he says simply, and for a second she feels apprehensive of what's coming next, but he just smirks and she decides to play along.

"Nervous? You don't do nervous, Jess, just like I don't fawn," she says matter-of-factly. "I don't think I've ever seen you nervous."

"Sure you have, " he laughs. "I just hide it well."

"Okay fine, I'll bite," she smiles. "Why would you be nervous?"

He shrugs and his lips curve slightly as he leans on the table. "I don't know. Maybe because, on some level, this feels like a…well, a date, for lack of better word."

She laughs out loud. "A date? Jess, you're barefoot, and I'm in my pajamas. This doesn't even begin to look like any date I've ever been on, or even heard about." She laughs again and thinks for a moment. "If anything, it's more like a slumber party."

He chuckles. "Hey, that works too, although I thought I would have to work much harder to get to that point," he says mischievously and now it's his turn to laugh as he watches several shades of red change on her face. It's fun to watch and so he decides to push it a bit further. "Correct me if I'm wrong, because I've never actually been to one, but slumber parties do involve sleeping at some point, yes? In beds?"

She glares at him for a moment but then her face changes subtly; he knows that look she gives him, and he braces himself, suddenly not feeling so confident anymore. "You've never been to a slumber party?" she asks playfully, her eyes wide open, but there's a soft glow in there that makes him think that some sort of trap is being laid here, and he just can't make it out.

"No, guys don't tend to do that as much," he says, choosing his words carefully.

She smiles again. "Those are not the slumber parties I was referring to," she says sweetly, and he can almost feel the wire close around his ankle as he walks straight into it. Realizing it's a challenge he's not ready to accept, he looks at her for a minute but she just smiles a patronizing little smile that's charming and infuriating at the same time.

He shakes his head and smiles back. "Good one, Gilmore," he says and bows his head in recognition.

"Thank you," she laughs and bows back. "I'll be here all night."

He looks at her and she's smiling now, and suddenly it's a familiar, easy scene, just sitting here and rambling pointlessly, it's the same kind of easy that they had known before, that they had always shared and it somehow feels natural and long overdue. The pasta vanishes quickly over the next ten minutes, and they push their plates away, wonderfully full and happy they've made it this far so easily and without incident, without the yelling and the screaming and the weirdness, and they just sit across from each other, exchanging looks and exchanging smiles that are somehow new and full of promise.

Suddenly feeling very bold, Jess leans back in his chair and crosses his arms on his chest, a smug look on his face. "You do realize you're flirting shamelessly, right?"

It a little unnerving to hear him say it, and her skin tingles, but she smiles nonetheless and looks him straight in the eye. "Hey, you started it," she points out. "_Slumber parties involve sleeping, and beds_?" She laughs. "I don't see why you should have all the fun."

He nods and looks at her. "Okay, point taken," he says with a smile, but then the smile disappears and he clears his throat. "It's just that I was doing it consciously," he continues quietly, "and I didn't know whether you were too."

The expression on her face turns serious and the smile melts away slowly, but she doesn't look away from him. The playful sparkle in her eyes gives way to other things, subdued and somewhat evasive but present nonetheless, and after a long moment of just looking at him, she smiles again, she smiles widely and carelessly. "I was," she says simply and shrugs her shoulders. "It comes naturally, and I can't help it."

A wide grin spreads across his face and he looks so pleased with himself that she can't help laughing. "Could you try not to look so incredibly smug about it?", she says and kicks his chair under the table, but he just shakes his head and gets up, the grin still on his face, and begins to clear the dishes away.

Rory gets up as well, and, hiding a smile of her own, collects the plates and brings them over to the sink where Jess starts to wash them. The space around the sink is scarce and cluttered, so as he washes them, she dries them immediately and puts them away, but in such a small space, that makes for very close contact and all attempts at conversation fail as they both concentrate hard to avoid each other's arms, legs and shoulders, to avoid touching at all, and it soon becomes a desperate, frustrating struggle, futile and pointless, because in that silence, the latent tension that hangs in the air returns in full force and feelings reign supreme. The twisted little circle they're caught in ends abruptly in one moment, the moment when they both take a wrong turn and end up facing each other, and neither has the energy to attempt to hide what they're feeling anymore, so they just stare at each other, out of breath and agitated, scared and tired, lost and found at the same time. They wait for a long second, they wait for something to happen but nothing does, and finally, Jess just shakes his head and walks away, cursing under his breath, and Rory leans against the counter and hides her face behind her hands, hating herself for not being able to make that one little step towards him when she knew it was hers to make, because she knows he won't do it, not after that scene at the park.

When she finally collects herself enough to be able to look around, she finds him sitting at the edge of the bed with his hands in his hair, staring at his feet. She walks over to him slowly, with a lump in her throat, and she sits on the floor in front of him quietly, almost afraid to disturb him.

"Jess," she says softly, unsure what she wants to say but still feeling the need to apologize and comfort him somehow. He doesn't look at her, he just shakes his head again, and suddenly it scares her because she can feel something is happening inside him that she should stop, or at least know about.

"Jess, please look at me," she says again and her voice quivers slightly; there's gentle pleading in her voice that he can't ignore and he lifts his eyes and looks at her. "I'm sorry," she breathes, "I'm so sorry…"

"I can't do this anymore, Rory," he blurts out desperately. "We either have to find some way to talk about this, or just forget about it, because this limbo, it's going to drive me insane! It's just too much, all this stuff that's hanging over our heads, it's suffocating me, and I feel like I can't breathe, but I can't do anything about it because you just won't talk to me, and although it's hard every time, in here, in this tiny house, it's like hell, Rory!" His face cringes and he shakes his head again, bringing his voice down a notch. "I don't know what it's like for you, but for me, it pretty much can't get any worse." He takes a breath and summons every piece of feeling he holds for her in his heart into the look he gives her now. "Please, please, I know it's a lot to ask, but please, will you just talk about this?"

Shaken by the look and the tone, and feeling guilty for driving him so far up the wall that he looks so completely broken now, she fights back tears and nods her head slowly. "Yeah," she whispers. "We can talk about anything you want."

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_A/N: _  
_All writers love reviews, good or bad. They are precious insights into our reader's minds. They usually make us try harder. They often make us get better at what we do. They always motivate us to keep going. They show us what we've done well, what we've done badly and what we could have done differently. Ultimately, they make us happy._  
_Just something to think about :)_


	22. Homeward Bound

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them. No copyright infringement intended.  
A big thank you goes out to everyone who reads, and a a giant thank you to those who have taken the time to review.

* * *

_Mood music: Better Man, Robbie Williams_

* * *

** 22. Homeward Bound**

Jess looks at her for a long moment, wondering if he's gone so far around the bend that he's actually hallucinating. "We can talk about anything I want?" he repeats blankly.

Rory nods her head again and dares to venture a small smile. "Yeah, that's what I said."

"Why now?" The words are faster than the thought process behind them, and he suddenly realizes it really doesn't matter what made her change her mind. "No, forget it, it's not important."

She shakes her head quickly. "No, you're right, it is important, and I want to explain." She takes a breath and her heart climbs into her throat slowly. "The way I've been acting these last few weeks was …well, abominable, really."

"Rory…" The look in his eyes is gentle and sweet, and somehow, this makes it all that much harder to remember why she was ever so cruel to him.

"Jess, please, just… let me get this out, okay?" He nods his head and she smiles before her expression turns serious again and she continues. "I had to come up here and look back on it all to figure out how completely unreasonable and stupid I was, and how very cruel and unfair to you, because really, all you were asking for is for me to listen, and for me to refuse to do even that, well, it was a whole new level of crazy and something I can't even begin to justify." She looks at the floor for a moment and swallows hard before she takes a breath and lifts her eyes to his again. "I'm sorry I was so horrible to you, you didn't deserve it."

"Don't apologize for that," he interrupts her quickly, feeling uneasy as he remembers the feeling that washed over him in the car. "You had every reason in the world to hate my guts."

"Maybe, but still," she continues. "It was idiotic of me not to even want to listen to you. It's just that it completely threw me off balance when you showed up, and I just didn't know how to deal with it."

"I know, I'm sorry," he says quietly. "I guess I never really thought about what it was like for you."

"Yeah, you didn't," she says simply.

He looks at her and the guilt is back in full force. "So tell me," he says. "I should know just how much I should hate myself."

She studies him for a moment, but suddenly realizes she actually wants him to know this. "Okay," she says quietly and thinks about where to begin for a moment. "After you left, I just felt like there was a huge part of me missing. I guess I kept thinking you would come back, and I didn't really want to accept the fact that you were gone." She takes a breath and remembers the hospital. "Until the day I crashed the car because I thought I saw you on the street."

As he hears the words, he literally feels sick and the look he gives her reflects this so clearly that her heart jumps out to him instantly. "I was fine," she says quickly. "I just hit my head, it was no big deal. They let me go home immediately."

Jess appreciates that she's trying to downsize the incident, but it doesn't really help because the fact that he managed to put her in the hospital doesn't change with her being so graceful about it. Suddenly scared of what else he might learn, he briefly wonders whether he really wants to hear this at all, but there's some twisted curiosity within that demands to know everything that there is to know about her.

"Anyway," she returns to her story once she notices the color come back to his face, "that's when I sort of …evicted you from my head. I just… decided it would be easier that way."

"Was it?" he asks when she pauses for a minute, wondering if she had somehow managed to do what he had been trying to accomplish for months as he wondered from one city to the next, trying to get her out of his head.

"Yeah, it was," she says sincerely. "For a while, I just stopped thinking about you all together, and I thought I was fine." She smiles and shakes her head. "Of course, now, when I'm so much older and wiser, I see that I wasn't fine, I was just in denial, and as wonderful and cozy as denial easy, it's just not a very good place to be."

"Yeah," he nods and smiles as well. "It's a place I got to know really well over the last few years."

"Then the first book arrived." She suddenly stops and looks at him, debating whether or not to ask the question, but immediately decides she wants to know. "What made you send that first book, Jess? The Zafron?"

The answer comes immediately, he doesn't have to think about it all, and this surprises her, although she doesn't really know why. "It was that passage I underlined in the beginning," he says with a small smile." I somehow missed it completely on the first read-through, and I had already finished the book, but I had nothing else to read so I started it again, and when I reached that passage, it just reminded me of you." He pauses slightly and frowns. "Although this is where all conscious thought ends, because I can't explain how I got the idea to send you the book, or why I kept sending others after that. I just did. Often I didn't really want to send them, but I sent them nevertheless, and sometimes that would really make me angry, that I couldn't stay away completely. When I think about it now, I guess I felt I was talking to you on some weird level by sending them, but I didn't think of it that way at the time." He looks at her carefully and his tone changes subtly when he speaks again. "The only book that I actually sent with a purpose was the last one."

"Were there books after Zafron that you read but didn't send?" she asks quietly.

He shakes his head. "No. I sent them all." He smiles at her. "Did you like the Zafron?"

She thinks about this for a moment. "It's a very strange book, that one, kind of morbid, but I loved the way it was written, I loved the words and the descriptions, and some of the ideas, and... I loved that it came from you, although it took me a while to realize that." He gives her a strange look and she smiles. "I didn't want to have anything to do with that book at first, and I definitely didn't want to have anything to do with you, but eventually, I just sort of learned to accept the fact that you'd always be a big part of me, whether I want you to be or not, and once I accepted that, I was fine again."

"Until that last book," Jess says quietly and looks at her, and it's suddenly very clear to her how very frightened he is of what she'll say next.

"Yeah, until that last book," she says softly. "Those lines you wrote in there just ruined everything, they really broke my heart because I thought you weren't coming back, and I just felt that all those feelings I had somehow managed to make a part of myself and learned to live with just blew up in my face, and I hated you for being able to do that, it made me furious, and it made me hate you." She looks at him and he's staring at his feet, still and quiet. "And it only got worse when I saw you again, because it was much easier to hate you without having to look at you or talk to you, and when I realized that I couldn't do it, it made me hate me as well."

"I'm sorry," he says to his feet when the silence grows longer. "I feel I should just get that stamped on my forehead or something, because I realize hearing it will get old very soon, but there's really nothing else I can say, except that until a few days ago, I really didn't realize how badly I'd screwed up when I left the way I did, and that I didn't really think about what it must have been like for you until earlier tonight." He looks at her and swallows hard. "And I have no idea how it is possible we are talking about this now, because when you walked out on me the other day…" He shakes his head and runs his hands through his hair. "I thought that was it."

She smiles and nods. "I thought so too," she says quietly. "But we were both wrong. I'm sorry for that, and I'm sorry for tonight, for not just letting you know immediately that I was past all that craziness, hopefully, and that I'm ready to listen, but somehow, tonight was just so easy and wonderful and I just didn't want to disturb that, I didn't want to bring all that mess into it, but it was stupid, very stupid again to pretend it wasn't there already."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," he smiles sadly. "Tonight was sort of like a trip back in time, and I didn't want to mess with it either." He sighs. "And if it wasn't for this …energy that makes me part with my mind completely every time I'm within two feet of you, maybe it would have worked. " He shrugs and looks at her hopelessly. "But it's there and every time I see you, it just gets bigger."

Rory blushes but doesn't take her eyes away from his, because it's a truth that she can't deny anymore either. "Yeah, I feel that too." She shakes her head, puzzled. "But you know, somehow, it's different than it was before." He looks at her curiously and she blushes harder, but now that the topic is out there, she's determined to get to the bottom of it. "I mean, it was always there, but I don't remember it being so… disruptive."

He can't help laughing at the word 'disruptive' because it's just a very Rory word to use to describe emotional chaos. She smiles as well, and that makes it a little easier to tackle this sensitive and somewhat dangerous issue, and he looks at her, thinking it's adorable that she can be so insightful and intelligent about so many things, yet so completely clueless about so many others.

"What?" she asks when he doesn't say anything for a while. "You think I'm wrong?"

He shakes his head but he can't help a smile. "No, you're not wrong. It's just that there's a very simple reason why it's so much more …'disruptive'… now."

She looks at him blankly. "There is?"

He laughs again. "Come on, Rory, you can't be serious!"

She crosses her arms and frowns at him. "Okay, in a minute, I'm going to think that you are just getting a kick out of making me feel stupid."

He shakes his head. "I can't believe you're going to make me spell this out for you!"

She just glares at him and says nothing, and after a minute, he shrugs his shoulders and gives up. "Fine," he says and looks at her. "But for the record, I feel really stupid for having to say this." He looks at her carefully and his tone is softer when he speaks again. "This crazy thing was there before, it was always there, but it was just easier to deal with, because we didn't fight it back then. It was okay to touch, and to kiss, and to…" The look in her eyes changes and he stops himself because her face shows he doesn't need to go any further. "It just took a lot of the edge off," he says quietly.

"Oh," she says in a small voice. "Right." She clears her throat and tries to will the heat off of her face, but it's just not that easy to do. "I never really thought of it that way."

He shrugs. "Yeah, well…" He can't think of anything else to say, so he just watches her silently as she contemplates this, and for the first time he actually realizes that they're talking, that this is the conversation he's been hoping for ever since he came back, but somehow it's difficult to believe it's really happening and he suddenly feels an overwhelming urge to pinch himself just to make sure he's not dreaming. The realization makes him deliriously happy for one moment, but it also sends a chill down his spine in the next, because he suddenly understands that this is also the only chance he has to make things right, and if he screws it up, there's not likely to be another one, and as he thinks about this, it becomes painfully clear just how many things could go wrong in the process.

"Maybe we should just kiss then," her voice comes suddenly and it feels to Jess like it's coming from a whole different dimension as it yanks him out of his mind trip. He registers the words but he's certain he heard them wrong because she couldn't have possibly said what he thinks she said.

"Okay, can you repeat that?" he says incredulously, still certain he must have misunderstood something.

She blushes and fidgets a little, wondering if he's just trying to make her squirm, but the look on his face is borderline comatose and she realizes quickly that it's too much even for him to pull off intentionally. Her heart beats like an orchestra of drums, but she still looks him straight in the eyes, wondering if she'll regret being so bold later.

"I said that maybe we should just kiss then," she repeats and it surprises her she's able to get the words out in such an even tone. "You know, if that would make it easier to handle all this tension we have going here, maybe it makes sense to just… get it out of the way," she adds quickly and shrugs her shoulders. "Maybe it would make it easier to talk about things without it hanging over our heads."

He gapes at her for a small eternity, completely unable to wrap his mind around this suggestion. "You want to kiss me?" he finally chokes out, completely dazed and struggling to find his bearings again.

_God , yes _is the first thought that goes through her head, and it throws her off for a second because for the moment, she still needs to believe that the reason she suggested this is of more objective nature, in a sense that it's something that is a good idea because it would make the situation easier and not because it's rooted in her own desire.

"Rory?" his voice comes quietly and the look in his eyes is different now, but the question remains the same. "You want to kiss me?"

She blushes and looks away from him. "That's not what I said, exactly."

He nods but his eyes still burn into her. "Okay, then what did you say, exactly?"

She takes a breath and concentrates. "I just said that maybe we should kiss, just to get rid of the tension, so it would be easier to… just talk."

He searches her face although he's not really sure what he's looking for. "And that's it?"

She shrugs and prepares to deliver the small lie without flinching. "Yeah, that's it."

He smiles and leans down a little closer to her. "We just kiss and the tension goes away and then we talk like nothing happened?"

Her heart beats so loud that she's almost certain he can hear it, and her mouth is suddenly dry, so she swallows hard and licks her lips before she nods her head slightly. "Yeah, I guess."

He stares at her with a small smile, amazed again how her mind works, how she managed to present this as a logical problem and come up with an almost mathematical solution to it, a solution that comes naturally when all factors are known and neatly put together, but at the same time, how she is completely oblivious to the fact that there so many things unknown here and there would likely be consequences to that kiss that are impossible to predict.

"Do you really think that's possible, Rory?" he asks softly. "Do you think it is possible for us to just kiss right now, and it just takes the tension away, and nothing else changes in the process?"

She says nothing but having him stare at her from such proximity suddenly makes her realize what he means. If he kisses her right now, there's no telling where that kiss will take them, how and where it will end, and how far it can go; once it happens, there will be no control over it anymore, but she suddenly understands that she doesn't really care. For weeks, she struggled for control, and it got her nowhere, so maybe it's time to just give it up completely. "I don't know," she says quietly. "But I think there is just one way to find out."

If she had hit him over the head with a brick, he would have probably gotten over it quicker and with a significantly smaller headache than the one that threatens to develop now, in the face of this impossible choice she just presented him with. He studies her face for a long time, and it kills him to make himself do the right thing again, but he knows deep down that this is not how this should happen, he doesn't really even want it to happen this way because somehow it would be so much less than he wants it to be.

He takes a deep breath and smiles at her. "Rory, there are no words to describe how much I want to kiss you right now, and to have you sit there and basically tell me it's okay to do it is something I wouldn't have believed possible 24 hours ago. But I just can't do it," he says softly. "I can't do it because all those things you were so angry about before are still there, and it feels like we'd just be skipping over them and I don't want to do that, because once we get to them, you might feel differently and you might regret all of this later." He shakes his head and gives her an honest, imploring look, a look that begs for understanding. "I just feel like I'm treading a very fine line here and I really don't want to screw up again, and right now, it just feels safer not to kiss you and have you resent me for it than to kiss you and have you run away screaming again," he says sincerely and searches her face, worried he's gone too far.

She can't help but cringe at the screaming reference, just like she can't help feeling slightly disappointed that he's being so very reasonable, but she reminds herself quickly that his being this careful now has a lot to do with what she's put him through over the last few weeks, and she sadly recognizes she had it coming. As she looks at his face, it hurts her to see him so anxious and rattled, and she smiles at him gently. "I'm done running, and hopefully, I'm done screaming, too."

He feels a giant sense of relief wash over him and he smiles. "Don't say that. I'd like to have a chance to make you scream again at some point in the future, although maybe in slightly different circumstances," he says with a trace of mischief in his eyes.

She blushes slightly but she's determined to hold her own. "Ah, promises," she says sweetly and matches the look he gives her with equal challenge in her eyes, and it quickly gets difficult for both to breathe again. She stares at his face and thinks he looks the same but at the same time so different, and suddenly, without warning, the image shifts in her mind and that scene from earlier returns, the one when he took his shirt off and somehow, immediately, it cross-references with that scene in her bedroom on the day he left, and she compares the two eagerly, skin to skin and muscle to muscle, and it becomes clear quickly that the new one is much better, like she's seen a boy she once knew somehow made into a man, and the way she wants him seems to have somehow changed with it. As she looks at him, she slowly realizes that right now, that kiss is the only thing in her head, the only thing she's interested in, the only thing she wants and she wants it more than she ever wanted anything in her life and the craving is so intense that she's amazed she still hasn't moved, that she's still sitting here contemplating it instead of over there, becoming a part of him.

"Don't look at me like that," he suddenly says softly, feeling the goose bumps begin to crawl over his skin and his heart start to race. "You're making it impossible for me to put two coherent thoughts together when you look at me like that."

She smiles a mysterious little smile but the look doesn't change. "I've come to learn that thinking is way over-rated," she says quietly and his heart skips a beat as she moves a little closer and gently pulls on his legs, making him slide down to the floor in front of her. He lands with a thud and his brain disconnects, but he lands on something and automatically, he pulls it out from under himself, and even though he is completely prepared to just shove it away, it somehow feels familiar and he steals a quick glance at it - the room suddenly spins out from under him as he stares at the moleskine. Rory stares at it as well, suddenly feeling like a giant sky-scraper has sprouted into existence between them, and the notion intensifies as she watches him jump up so fast as if a monster had suddenly reared its head and barred its teeth at him. His face suddenly changes to beyond recognition, and there are so many mixed emotions in it and they are changing so quickly that she doesn't have time to recognize them, let alone figure out why they're there and what they mean, she just understands that the presence of that moleskine here has literally shocked him into speechlessness. He stares at the notebook for a moment, then runs his hands through his hair and starts pacing around blindly.

She gets up slowly and follows him around the room before she finally corners him by the door and makes him face her. The look he gives her is empty and vague, and when he speaks, his voice sounds hollow. "How did this get here?"

She ignores the question and takes the notebook from him. She throws it back on the bed and stands in front of him, her arms crossed on her chest, staring him down hard. "I didn't read it, Jess," she says quietly, holding his eyes firmly, and she knows she understood the question he didn't dare ask correctly as she watches the darkness slowly disappear from his face.

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_A/N: _

**_I'm sorry for the update delay, but two days ago I made a brilliant decision to ride my bike home from work through what may have been the worst rainstorm in recorded history, and now I'm in bed with a headcold and no voice at all, and typing is proving to be an enormous challenge. Also, since a few chapters back, the story is getting updated as it is being written, so the gap between the updates might get longer if I get stuck somewhere, but I promise to try and get the chapters up as soon as humanly possible :)_**

_All writers love reviews, good or bad. They are precious insights into our reader's minds. They usually make us try harder. They often make us get better at what we do. They always motivate us to keep going. They show us what we've done well, what we've done badly and what we could have done differently. Ultimately, they make us happy._  
_Just something to think about :)_


	23. Lost For Words

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them. No copyright infringement intended.  
A big thank you goes out to everyone who reads, and a a giant thank you to those who have taken the time to review.

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_Mood music: Love You Till The End, The Pogues_

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**23. Lost For Words**

It takes a few more moments of silence for the color to return to his face, but soon he manages to relax a little and he sticks his hands into his pockets and watches her silently. She doesn't move, she just stands in front of him with the same reassuring look in her eyes, small and silent and still, but there is also a weird sense of strength about her that feels strangely comforting. The notebook is far away, across the room on the table, but its presence still hangs in the air, demanding recognition.

"How come you didn't read it?" he asks quietly. "Everything you want to know is written in there."

She smiles. "I guess I decided I'd rather hear it from you. If and when you decided to tell me." She shrugs and looks at him. "And even if you don't want to tell me, I can live with that too."

"Since when?" he blurts out before he can stop himself, and immediately he cringes because it sounds like an accusation, and he doesn't want her to take it the wrong way. "Sorry, I didn't mean to bite your head off, it's just that all that stuff was a very big deal to you when we last talked about it… or, you know, yelled about it," he says, confused.

"I know," she nods, "but I kind of… revised… my position on that since then," she says with a small smile.

He gapes at her, not quite believing what he's hearing. "When? Why?"

She looks at him for a moment and then slowly walks over to the table and the moleskine. Somewhat reluctantly, he follows and watches her pick it up and turn around to face him again.

"I didn't read this," she says again and opens the moleskine, "but when I first picked it up, the postcards fell out, and this fell out with them." She finds the napkin and hands it to him. She can tell he recognizes it immediately because a small smile spreads on his face and when he takes it from her, he holds it like a little piece of treasure, fragile and precious. He suddenly remembers how many times in how many different places he held this in his hands, and how much comfort he found in it, this little piece of her that he could always come back to and that no one and nothing could take away from him. Her heart goes out to him joyfully as she studies his eyes because they reflect everything she understood for the first time when she looked at that napkin earlier tonight and once again, she knows she really doesn't care what else is written in that notebook, she doesn't care if he tells her or not because it won't change the way she feels about him at all.

"I know why this is important to me," he says softly after a while, "but I don't understand why it's so important to you."

"The napkin itself isn't," she smiles. "But the fact that you kept it…" She shrugs. "It just showed me that maybe you meant all those things that you wrote, and all those things that you said, because keeping this napkin is something that you did, it goes beyond words." She looks at him and her face feels hot again. "You were always good with words, Jess, it was your actions that were… well, questionable," she smiles again.

He smiles and says nothing at first, but then a trace of sparkle returns to his eyes and he shrugs. "You know, maybe I just needed something to wipe my fingers clean," he says jokingly, in an attempt to break the tension. "Have you thought of that?"

"Sure," she nods her head but the look in her eyes doesn't change. "But I think I like my version better, so I'll just stick to it, if that's okay with you."

He just nods and says nothing, not because he's uncomfortable or trying to hide his feelings, but because he can't even begin to explain how much that little piece of her meant to him over the last few months. It was home, it was everything safe and comforting and familiar, and it was an anchor he returned to over and over again when he felt everything else fall apart around him, and it amazes him that she somehow picked up on all of that, even if from a slightly different angle. He takes the moleskine from her slowly and puts the napkin back inside, and it somehow feels less threatening.

"How did this even get here?" he asks again, bewildered, turning it over in his hands.

She looks at it, and she has her suspicions; it was probably Luke's one attempt in a lifetime to meddle into something that didn't concern him, and although his intentions were good, she doubts that Jess will see it that way. She looks back at him with a smile. "Does it really matter?"

He thinks about this and shakes his head slowly. "No, I guess it doesn't." He studies her closely for a while and he still can't quite believe she is so completely ready to move past all those questions she had and to just let go of everything she so desperately wanted to know over the last few months. "And you really don't care what's written in here?" he asks, and although he tries his best to keep the tone even, it still comes out somewhat skeptical.

She smiles again. "There are several answers to that question, Jess," she frowns and tries to clear her head because she vaguely feels what she says now will matter greatly on many levels, some of which she might not even be aware of at the moment. "I don't care in a sense that I know whether I read it or not, the way I feel won't change either way. It's just not an issue anymore." She looks at him thoughtfully and chooses the words that follow carefully. "Do I want to know all of those things? I do. I want to know in the same way you wanted to know what I went through, because it's you, and everything about you is important to me. But if it is easier for you not to relive it, if you have left it behind, if there will be no more breakdowns or consequences to deal with that come from it, if it is something that is over and done with and you would rather it stays that way, then I don't need to know. If that is your past," she says gently, nodding towards the notebook in his hands "and you'd rather keep it that way, I understand that."

Suddenly, he realizes that she actually knows him a lot better than he ever gave her credit for, she understands things about him that sometimes he doesn't really understand himself and as he looks at the notebook, for the first time, he wonders if maybe he should just let her read it. The thought brings chills as it always does, but it also brings something new, a realization that if she reads what he's written in there, then there would be nothing left to hide, nothing, it would all be out there, forever, and there would be one other person in the world who would know him like he knows himself. It's a frightening idea, but it's also strangely liberating and suddenly it becomes painfully clear that he was wrong, he was wrong when he thought that New York was the end of the journey he'd been on and he knows now that it is this moment, here and now, where that journey truly ends.

He turns the moleskine over in his hands one more time and fights off one last panic attack before he hands it to her. "I think you should read it," he says breathlessly, trying hard to keep his hand steady and even harder to sound like he's sure about this; the first part he manages to pull off, but the second fails miserably.

She notices this and watches him carefully, wondering what to do, wondering if he would feel this way if it wasn't for this crazy night, worried if he's going to be sorry he did this later. "Are you sure about this?" she asks softly, not wanting to reach out and take the notebook yet, not before she's certain it's what he wants.

"No," he blurts. "I'm not sure. I'm scared shitless, Rory, but these things in here, they are a huge part of who I am and even though I'm done with them, that won't change, and that's why you should know about them. At first I thought I'd tell you about them myself, but honestly, I can't even begin to imagine where to even start or how to find the words, and absurdly, it's just easier this way." He takes a breath. "Please, just take it and read it, and if you still want to have anything to do with me when you're done, I'll be here."

She takes the notebook immediately, a little shaken by his last sentence and its ominous tone, and watches him exhale slowly and plant his hands into his pockets again. She turns away from him and slowly walks over to the cupboard where she pulls out a bag of nachos and carries it over to the bed where she settles in a corner with her feet curled up under her.

He watches her move around the room and the scene somehow plays out in slow motion, and he doesn't really understand what she's doing until she settles on the bed, rips open the nachos and places the moleskine in her lap.

"What are you doing?" he asks, suddenly sweating again.

She looks at him calmly. "Getting ready to read," she says with a smile.

"What, now?" he gapes at her, completely mortified by the idea.

She frowns. "Is there a better time?"

"Yes," he nods vigorously. "Any time when I'm not in the room is a better time!"

She frowns some more. "Why?"

"Why? Rory, just the idea that you're actually going to read this and finally find out first hand just how very screwed up I am is agonizing enough on its own, and the prospect of me having to actually witness it, that's just…" He shakes his head. "I can't even think a word that would describe just how scary that is," he mutters quietly.

She looks at him and panic shows on his face so plainly that her heart goes out to him, but she knows that now is the time to do this, it's the perfect time because it's just the two of them here, in this little house, with the rain outside, and there's nowhere to run, which means that whatever happens, they'll have to find a way to deal with it.

"I know," she says softly. "But I might have questions, and it's better that you're here to answer them if I do." She looks at him and it's a look that shows that she knows what's going through his head. "Also, the last time I saw this look on your face, you were gone the next day. You were wrong then when you thought I couldn't handle whatever was behind it, and you're wrong if you think that now, and I won't let you run away again, Jess." She holds his eyes for another brief moment and then she looks down on the moleskine in her lap and opens it purposefully, apparently completely oblivious to him.

Realizing that he somehow doesn't really get a say in this, it becomes easier to accept the inevitable and so he tries to do it gracefully. "I'll make some coffee," he mutters quietly, mostly to himself, because she's not really aware of him anymore at all. He makes the coffee silently and settles in a chair, with his feet resting on the chair opposite, and he empties his mug slowly and watches her read, relaxing more and more as he watches her flip the pages without any violent facial changes or wild winces; there is just an occasional frown here and there, an absent-minded smile and a few instances of raised eyebrows, but nothing else, and this is a small comfort although he knows it will take a while for her to reach the heavier stuff. It gets difficult to sit after a while and the chair begins to feel like a torture device, so he gets up and walks around the room, trying to find something to do. He opens the door and determines it's still raining, but the wind has stopped, so he goes over to the window and opens it, and the air that comes in smells sweet and feels refreshing. He leaves the window open and checks his clothes, establishing quickly that they're still wet, and so he leaves them where they are. He moves to the kitchen and finds a radio there and he tries to get it to work, but the batteries are either dead or non-existent and so he gives up on that as well. Finding nothing to do, he suddenly feels tired and the concept of time enters his mind for the first time since he set foot in this house, and he suddenly realizes he has no idea how long ago that was, or what the time is now, so he goes looking for a clock, almost ecstatic he found something to occupy himself with. He finds one much faster than he would have liked, and it reads 2:09, and that somehow seems impossible, he feels it should be much later, because just a few hours seem much too short for everything that's happened tonight. He glances at Rory again and she hasn't moved at all, she just pulled a blanket over her legs at some point, and he thinks it's strange that she feels cold when he himself feels almost too warm. This give him a new idea and he goes looking for clothes, and in one of the cupboards he finds a stack of t-shirts that smell and feel clean, so he gets rid of the sweatshirt and puts one of those on, and immediately, it gets easier to breathe. He looks around the room again and sadly, no new distractions present themselves, and he feels tired again but can't make himself return to the chair. He steals a glance at the bed and it looks wonderful, and although he hesitates for a moment, he quickly reminds himself that this is Rory and nothing short of a direct blow to the head could disturb her while she's reading, and so he walks over to the bed slowly and stretches on the side she left empty, with his head across from where she's sitting. He laces his fingers under his head and gets comfortable, preparing to just watch her read silently.

The first time Jess inside the moleskine really scares her is when she gets to the drugs; not to the first mention of them, because they are scattered around every few pages and it soon becomes clear that in his New York life, they were a part of the lifestyle, but later, when she comes across a passage that is not so much about the drugs themselves anymore, but a story of addiction and what it feels like to live it. The description of the rush that shooting up brings is so very detailed and alive that she can almost feel it herself and that scares her because she realizes how very real and close to his mind that feeling is if he can describe it so perfectly after such a long time. The fact that he states clearly he hadn't used since New York brings a huge relief, but the very honest admission of how many times he wanted to makes her cringe all over again. The hows and the whys of it all are very clear and simple, common and unremarkable – an absent father, a troubled mother, a boy who grows up on the streets and doesn't really fit in anywhere, a friend who experiments, and then they both experiment some more, and some years later, she sits here and reads about it all, frozen when she does her math and figures out he was fourteen, maybe fifteen, at the time it was happening. Her throat closes and she looks up from the notebook for the first time and looks for him.

She finds him the moment her eyes move away from the pages, stretched out on the bed next to her, peaceful and asleep. It's such an unexpected scene that she forgets about everything else, and just watches him sleep and she finds such amazing peace in just looking at him that she somehow doesn't feel so frightened by what she just read anymore, she just feels so very, very close to him. She looks outside and there are soft hues of dawn outside the window; the night is almost over and she suddenly remembers Luke will wake up in a few hours and find no Jess in his bed and no truck outside, and probably freak out. She puts the notebook away and covers Jess with a blanket, then she gets up quietly and walks to the kitchen where she makes some cereal, and while she eats it, she types a message to Lorelai, letting her know where Jess is. Once she's done with the cereal, she returns to the bed and pulls a corner of Jess's blanket over her feet; he squirms a little but doesn't wake up, and she watches him sleep for a few more minutes, utterly amazed how he looks so much like a boy again. Suddenly, a strong urge to touch him takes over and she only hesitates a moment before she moves down the bed carefully; she settles next to his face and runs her fingers down his cheek gently. He feels warm and his skin is soft to that point where it becomes apparent he could use a shave, but somehow, that doesn't bother her. She doesn't know how many times she repeats that run from his temple to his chin before he squirms again and she pulls away quickly and retreats back to her spot hastily, afraid she'll wake him up. It's a struggle to look away, but she returns to the moleskine nonetheless, somewhat surprised she's over a half way through already.

The sun is high in the sky when Jess wakes up and he opens his eyes slowly; Rory is the first thing that he sees, curled up in a little ball across the bed, small and sleeping, with the moleskine in her hands. He doesn't know how long he looks at her, but it's just long enough to realize that he can easily imagine waking up to her face every morning for the rest of his life. It's a precious scene and he takes it in slowly, registering every detail, remembering it, because there's no telling what the day will bring and he wants to keep this memory, just in case he doesn't get to ever experience the real thing again. As his eyes travel over her, they slowly make their way to the notebook in her hands, and his throat tightens when he sees she's nearly done and it's easy to tell that there's probably just the story of return to New York left for her to read, and it's the worst one, the one that made him run the twice already and then chased him first through Stars Hollow and then all the way across the country. It's the one that wouldn't let go, it wouldn't let go until he finally admitted to himself, and to her as well, as soon as she turns a few more pages, that he is responsible for a boy dying, just as responsible as if he had killed him himself. As always, the thought makes him sick and then it makes him move; he gets up slowly, careful not to disturb her, and makes some coffee. The sun is shining outside and the sky is blue, so he takes the mug and goes out to the porch where he leans against a beam and watches over the lake, waiting for the chills to subside and his heartbeat to return to normal again.

Rory wakes up to the door creaking and for a moment, there's confusion, but as she sees the moleskine in her hands, her head clears quickly and she looks for him. The room is empty and panic strikes quickly as she thinks he's gone again; she sits up in a rush and looks around the room wildly, but he's nowhere to be found, and just as her heart begins to sink, she catches a glimpse of him through the window. The relief that washes over her is so huge that she feels weak, and she sinks back into the bed and inhales deeply, trying to steady her breathing and clear her head. She looks at the moleskine in her hands and can't quite believe she fell asleep with only a few more pages left, but on some level, she's glad she did because it somehow makes more sense to wrap this up now, when her head is clear and her eyes don't sting. She finds the place where she left off, and suddenly she knows why it she fell asleep – his handwriting changes here and becomes difficult to read, and it must have been too big a challenge because she was really tired by the time she got to this part. The next few lines tell her this is New York, and suddenly there is an uneasy sense of foreboding as it becomes clear that this is probably where all the questions get answered, and all the anger and fear and desperation that live inside these pages find their reason for being. She braces herself and goes on carefully, but no amount of preparation can really shield her from what she finds in the following pages, from what she learns happened in that alley when he was just a boy, from all the guilt it made him feel and the twisted sense of responsibility for a death that was a tragic accident, a result of many, many mistakes of two boys who got mixed up in things that were dangerous and deadly. Some of the blame lays with Jess, but it's not for what happened that night, it's for the choices that led up to it, and those were choices both of them made. He doesn't understand this at all, she realizes in a moment and it breaks her heart because suddenly she sees the full volume of guilt that he's been carrying around, it presents itself for the first time in all its glory and it threatens to crush her like a little, insignificant bug, and she understands why he tried so hard to out-run this feeling and can't even begin to imagine the strength it must have taken to finally face all that guilt and own up to the responsibility of it all, when the real tragedy of it is that it really wasn't his to own in the first place.

She stares at the last page long after she's done reading it and watches her tears smudge the lines as she waits for them to subside and for her breath to slow, but somehow, it doesn't happen, everything she just learned just resonates louder within with every heart beat and she suddenly knows she can't do this on her own, she can't get it under control. She gets up blindly and goes looking for him, uncertain what she'll say, but hoping the words will come, some magical words that will make him realize how wrong he has it, words that will take some of that pain away and make him hurt less. She stops for a moment when she reaches the door and makes one final effort to stop the tears and catch her breath but it fails miserably so she just gives up and steps out into the porch. The sound makes him turn around and when he looks at her, any control she had left just disappears into thin air and there are no words to do justice to what she's feeling.

Suddenly, only one thing in the world makes sense and feels right, and she just throws herself into his arms blindly and grips him tight, determined never to let go of him again.

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_A/N: _

**_Thank you all for the get-well wishes, I'm happy to report I feel much better :)_**

_All writers love reviews, good or bad. They are precious insights into our reader's minds. They usually make us try harder. They often make us get better at what we do. They always motivate us to keep going. They show us what we've done well, what we've done badly and what we could have done differently. Ultimately, they make us happy._  
_Just something to think about :)_


	24. How It Was Meant To Be

A/N:

I don't own the characters, I just play with them. No copyright infringement intended.

So, this is it - the final chapter. It's super long but I couldn't find a right place to split it, and I didn't really want to anyway. I can't describe how it feels to finish this story, but it is finished, although somehow I can't make myself mark it complete - maybe in a day or two I'll get there :O) I hope I have managed to end this right, because I really can't tell how happy I am with it yet, it will take a few days to sink in, but in the meantime, if you enjoy reading it half as much as I enjoyed writing it, I'll be happy with that :O)

Once again, thank you for reading and thank you for all the wonderful reviews, they have really made this a beautiful experience for me.

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_Mood music: These Are The Days, 10000 Maniacs_

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**24. How It Was Meant To Be**

She comes crashing into him with such force that Jess staggers and it takes him a moment to steady himself as he closes his arms around her. He can't see her face because it's buried in his chest; her hands are wrapped around his neck and she clings to him so hard that it's difficult to breathe, but he doesn't want to breathe anyway and even if he drops dead because of it, he can't think of a better way to go. It takes only a second to realize she's crying, and it's not gentle weeping, but full-blown sobs that leave her out of breath and shaking against him uncontrollably. He doesn't really know where this surge of grief comes from, but he knows enough of her to sense it's somehow for his benefit, and on some elusive level, he slowly understands it's him she's crying for, for all the things she learned about him today and it fazes him completely that this is what she does with all that knowledge, that it's this genuine and unrestrained outburst of feelings that she comes away with. His throat tightens and he holds her closer, and as his grip on her gets stronger, he feels the erratic rhythm of her breathing calm down slightly and she's not shaking so hard anymore. He bends his head down a little and his lips touch her hair.

"I'm fine," he whispers softly; "If you just look at me, you'll see I'm fine," he continues, and for a moment it seems like it was the wrong thing to say because she cries harder again, but he picks up on the relief in it and just waits for it to run its course. Still holding her to himself firmly with one hand, he runs the other up her back and into her hair slowly and pulls gently, trying to get her to look at him, but there's too much resistance there, and so he just rubs her neck gently, in lazy little circles. His heart beats wildly under her head and as he waits for her to catch her breath, he allows himself to really feel her for the first time, to really feel how warm she is and how very real in his arms and how perfectly she fits there. When he finally feels her still completely, he lets go of her waist and cradles her head gently and tries to get her to look at him again; this time, she moves slightly but still doesn't show her face.

"Come on, Rory, just look at me, I promise I'm fine," he says again, and finally she lets him tilt her face up. Their eyes lock together, and that's all it takes for all conscious thought to evaporate, and all they are left with again are hearts that beat wildly and breaths that match them. A small smile escapes him before his lips close over hers slowly, soft but firm, gentle and demanding at the same time, and she recognizes it immediately, this wonderfully tantalizing rhythm of his kiss that always starts slowly and develops gradually, like a musical masterpiece that begins with a simple theme that later grows into a symphony. It's almost an art-form, the way he kisses, the way he can make the world fade away completely with so little effort and make the entire universe come down to just this one perfect moment in which nothing but the two of them exists. She feels his hands move down her back again and as he pulls her closer, something ignites within and there's suddenly a craving for more, and she wraps her fingers in his hair and sets a rhythm of her own, faster and fiercer, but he pulls on her hair gently and breaks away slowly, leaving her breathless and blushing in the face of his smile.

"Why are you rushing?" he asks gently, a soft sparkle in his eyes.

"Why do you talk so much?" she asks right back, trying hard not to smile.

"Because you're cute when you're agitated," he smirks and pulls her closer.

"You're insufferable", she smiles inadvertently.

"And you're very impatient," he smirks. "And there's all the time in the world to do this just right."

She wordlessly admits that he's right and wraps her arms around him before she lifts herself up on her toes and finds his lips again, taking her time this time around, and as he feels her come so close to him again, he knows he wants to keep her there for hours, days and even weeks maybe, and it suddenly becomes clear that being apart from her has been like being separated from a vital body part, one he somehow hadn't realized he was missing before he miraculously got it back again. She kisses the same way she is, sweet and spontaneous and sincere, and it's this innocence that always makes him come undone, and it happens again, all those sensations within him that only she knows how to reach spring to life and with every breath, it becomes harder to control them until the point comes where he's just not capable to think clearly anymore. When she pulls away, he's grateful for the chance to get a grip over himself, because although he'd never admit it, the sheer magnitude of the power her touch holds over him sometimes scares him.

"I'm hungry," she smiles against his lips.

"Yes, I can see that," he says and lets go of her slowly and regretfully.

She takes his hand and pulls him towards the door. "Come on, we'll make eggs," she says brightly. "There are some mushrooms too, and we can throw those in as well."

He follows her inside and finds a frying pan while she beats the eggs together. "You know, scrambled eggs without bread, that's a lot of grease," he smiles. "There's a pretty good chance of some serious stomach trouble later on."

"I've got bread," she says over her shoulder.

"Right, nice and fresh from last week," he makes a face. "Can't say I'm really looking forward to that."

She laughs. "Yeah, except this is some weird macro-biotic variety that comes vacuumed and actually keeps great, although it is somewhat spongy."

"Macro-biotic? Since when is that even a part of your vocabulary?" He smirks and pours the scrambled eggs over the mushrooms that simmer in the pan.

She laughs again and leans against the counter. "I can't credit for that one, it's all Lorelai."

He shakes his head. "That's even weirder."

"I know," she nods. "But it's amazing what she'll come up with when faced with a prospect of me starving in the middle of nowhere."

The eggs are done and Jess fills their plates and takes them to the table while Rory finds the bread. They sit down and she laughs as she watches him eye the first slice of bread suspiciously for a second before he takes a bite, but apparently he can live with it because the next bite goes down without any wisecracks. She looks at him with raised eyebrows and he smiles.

"Kuddos to Lorelai, this is actually edible," he says. "I never would have guessed either of you could even locate the shelf at the market that holds this kind of stuff. Luke will never believe it," he smirks, but suddenly his face pales and he drops his fork.

She stops chewing and looks at him. "What?"

"Luke!" He rubs his eyes. "I forgot about Luke, and he has no idea where I am. Even worse, he has no idea where the truck is," he shakes his head and looks at her. "You know, he actually might kill me this time."

Relieved, she smiles. "Don't worry about it, I texted Mom this morning and let her know you're here," she says, strangely happy to see him worried about Luke.

"You did?" He looks around, frowning. "In that case, I'm surprised that the cavalry isn't here yet. I wonder what's taking them so long." He looks around again, straining his neck to see outside. "Although, I guess it's possible they're hiding in the bushes somewhere, with binoculars around their necks, getting ready to pounce as we speak."

She laughs out loud. "Wow, I see that latent paranoia of yours is still hard at work."

He shrugs. "Can you blame me? I mean, your mother always had this incredible sense of timing when it comes to walking into things I'd much rather she …well, didn't walk in on," he says with a smirk.

She grins and shakes her head. "I think we're pretty safe," she says and looks at him for a moment before she continues. "And in case you didn't know, my mom has actually been rooting for you pretty strongly these last few weeks."

"Yeah, right," he laughs and rolls his eyes. "I'm sure she's my biggest fan."

Rory just smiles at the familiar stubborn tone and the face that comes with it, but she lets them both slide and looks at him. "You've talked to her, right?"

"Yeah," he says with a half-smile.

She grins wider. "Well, since you're sitting here, I guess she didn't bite your head off."

"Yeah, I guess she didn't," he admits and somewhat reluctantly remembers that Lorelai really was unusually nice to him those few times they talked, but he still thinks that she might perceive the current situation very differently. "But at the time, you all but hated me. I'm not sure how happy she'll be about the fact that we are here together, alone."

Rory just smiles at how clueless he is, and decides to let it go. "I guess we'll have to wait and see." She laughs when he looks over his shoulder again. "Relax, Jess; I promise I'll defend you until my last breath against whoever jumps out of the bushes, even my mother."

"Yeah, I'm sure it's funny now but once she comes at you with her teeth showing, we'll just see how well you do," he says with a smirk, but she just laughs again, gathers the plates and takes them over to the sink. She runs the water and begins to rinse the dishes, smiling to herself, wondering why exactly she is so sure that Lorelai really is fine with Jess being here; she can't say how she knows this, but she just does.

Jess watches her from the chair, from a safe distance, and it's such a domestic scene that it's borderline funny, with her standing over the sink in her pjs and that long cardigan that almost looks like a bathrobe, her hair tangled and held together loosely in what was once a braid, and it's both sweet and unusual, but just too good not to take advantage of. He crosses his hands on his chest and admires the scene some more before the temptation just gets too hard to resist.

"You know, I can't help but notice, you've really got the whole housewife routine down perfectly," he says, smirking. "I didn't know you had it in you."

She throws him a dirty look over her shoulder. "That's real funny, Jess, but it will be a whole lot funnier when I start hurling plates and pans at your head," she says, smiling sweetly.

"Okay, duly noted, but you should see yourself, slaving over those dishes in your pjs, barefoot," he shrugs and smiles to himself. "It's every guy's dream," he adds with a mock sigh, but lunges out of the chair quickly as she turns around and launches a hand-full of water at him. It catches him at the left shoulder and he laughs, and she turns back to the sink, trying hard to look offended. He walks over to her slowly and somewhat carefully, ready to evade the next water projectile if one should come, but it doesn't, and he slips his hands around her waist and kisses the side of her face. Her hair gets in the way and he moves it to the side slowly, and kisses her again.

"I'm just messing with you," he murmurs in her ear and immediately her breath catches in her throat and her heart skips a beat, but she shakes it off and bites back a smile.

"Well, you better have your fun now because after this, it's not likely to happen again very soon," she quips quickly. "Following this historic occasion, the dish washing is all yours."

He smiles into her hair and grips her tighter. "That's fine, I'm happy to be your maid," he says quietly and kisses her again, and the kisses go on down the side of her face and then down to her neck. In a second, she forgets all about the dishes, she forgets about the world in general, there's just the crazy rhythm of her heart, the feel of his breath on her skin and the warmth of his body along hers. She turns around and reaches for him blindly, and this kiss that happens now is different, it's hungry and searching; the ground underneath her feet shifts and balance becomes an issue for a moment before he picks up on this and lifts her up on the counter. This makes things easier on some levels, because there's less tilting and less struggle with feet, but it makes things crazier and more hectic on others, because it's easier to get closer, closer to the point when there's no space between them at all and thinking becomes a hazy concept that quickly fades completely. She really doesn't care about this, she doesn't really care about anything except this kiss and how it makes her skin tingle and her blood rush, and most of all, how it somehow makes him grip her harder and hold her closer and how his breathing changes when she moves towards him. This little move lights up a thousand sparks inside him and he knows she doesn't have a clue what these little things she does can do to him and how far they can reach, and how quickly control over what happens next becomes an impossible issue, and with this crazy kiss, so intense and so fierce, so very intoxicating, it just slips away further with every second. Although fleeting and distant, the thought fights its way into his head somehow, the thought that says this whirlwind will soon take them places that might scare her once reached, and although it takes a colossal amount of will and a significant struggle with Rory, he brings the kiss to an end, and they just stay still for a moment, holding each other, waiting for the mayhem within to settle.

"I've missed you," she says suddenly as she looks at him.

"I've missed you too," he smiles.

"I've missed this," she adds, blushing slightly. "I've missed kissing you."

He chuckles softly and smirks at her. "Don't even get me started on how much I missed this. I nearly forgot just how good certain parts of you feel."

She laughs out loud. "No, you haven't! You were very clear about that over several pages."

It takes him a moment to figure out what she means; then he remembers there is more written inside that notebook than he thought of when he handed it to her, and a subtle shade of red colors his face.

"You're blushing," Rory says, smiling.

"I'm not blushing," he replies adamantly, but she just grins widely and nods her head.

"Yes, you are! I actually thought I'd never see this happen, but there it is!"

He closes his eyes and counts to ten, then he looks at her again. "Okay fine, have your fun, but don't overdo it, because in a minute, I'll be sorry I ever let you read that thing," he warns and starts to pull away from her, but she grabs his hand quickly and when he looks at her, there's a change in her face and she has a very serious look in her eyes.

"Don't ever be sorry you let me read that, Jess," she says quietly and he knows she's thinking of other things she found in there that are not a joking matter.

"I'm not," he says gently. "I won't be, ever."

She smiles and slides off the counter. "The dishes are all yours," she says brightly and moves past him quickly. "I'm going for a swim, and a change of clothes," she announces and points out the window. "For future reference, the area to the left of the giant bush that hangs over the water there is the girl's changing room, and the area to the right is the boy's." She turns around and points to a door behind her. "The tiny claustrophobic space in there that poses as a toilet we can share, although if I could pee standing up, I'd use the great outdoors for that too, but hey – that decision is all yours."

He smiles and gets started on the dishes, but watches her through the window as she walks down to the lake with a pile of clothes and a towel until she disappears behind the bush and he can't see her anymore, but when he's done with plates, he looks up again and sees her head floating over the water. He watches her swim for a while, then puts the dishes away and wipes the table clean. He then makes coffee and sets a mug full aside for Rory, then pours one for himself and leaves it to cool. In the meantime, he straightens out the blankets on the bed and finds the moleskine buried under a pillow. He picks it up and looks at it briefly before he sets it on the table. As he turns around, his foot catches on the suitcase that is sticking out from under the bed and he pulls it out, and he's suddenly faced with dozens of books. Smiling, he goes through them slowly and picks one; then he picks up his coffee and steps out on the porch where he sits on the stairs and reads.

Rory appears again half an hour later, in fresh pajama bottoms and tank top, but the same cardigan, a towel wrapped around her head and her previous set of clothes bundled under her arm. She sits next to him and smiles, tilting her head to check out the book title.

"_White Fang_," she reads, and looks at him. "Interesting choice. You know, I have _The call of the wild_ somewhere in there, too."

He understands the reference, but makes no comment, he just smiles and leans against the porch beam behind him. "How's the water?"

"Great, it's totally warm. Are you going in?" she asks, smiling brightly.

He looks at the lake and decides he could probably use a swim. "Maybe."

She shrugs. "Just don't take too long to decide, because once the sun goes down, the mosquitoes will eat you alive," she warns and stands up. "I need coffee."

"I just made some, I left you a mug on the counter," he says and opens his book again.

"Oh, you must be god or something," she smiles and bends down to kiss him before she goes back into the house.

Jess returns to the book but soon catches himself glancing at the lake every few paragraphs, and eventually he gives up and goes inside, searching for a towel. Rory is repacking her backpack and he heads for a closet where he found the t-shirts earlier and digs out a towel which he throws over his shoulder before he heads out again.

"I think I'll go for that swim," he calls out to her as he reaches for the door.

She looks at him over her shoulder. "Sure, have fun," she says and goes back to what she was doing, and he's already half-way down the porch when her voice comes again.

"Hey Jess!"

He turns around. "Yeah?"

The door opens and there's a grin on her face and a twinkle in her eyes. "If any menacing-looking swans come your way, just screech and I'll come running," she says sweetly before she bursts out laughing and returns inside quickly when he takes a step in her direction. Silently cursing Luke, he turns around again and continues down to the water.

The water is just cool enough to be refreshing and it feels good to swim and let his mind wonder and begin to analyze and understand the amazing change that has been the last 24 hours. It's still unbelievable to him on so many levels that he just can't help searching his mind for things that could go wrong and destroy it all, he thinks there must be something that he is over-looking, some impending disaster that will come crashing down any minute and just rob him of all this happiness that he thinks he doesn't really deserve anyway. Still, no matter how hard he tries to think of something, nothing comes to mind, because he always comes back to the fact that all his dark secrets are written in that notebook, and she now knows them all, and there's just nothing left to come and haunt him. It's a strange feeling, this sudden freedom and lack of all anxiety and apprehension, and he doesn't really know how to live like this, but soon he smiles to himself as he realizes that he will just have to learn, because this is now the reality of his life and again, it just feels too good to be true.

He gets out of the water and dries himself quickly, then pulls his underwear and the sweatpants back on, and sits on the grass, letting the sun warm his back and dry his hair. He looks over the trees and thinks about Rory and her kisses, and that scene by the counter, and he quickly feels heat spread inside him again and his mind wonders further, towards the night ahead of them and the fact that there's just one bed inside that house. This makes the heat intensify and very graphic images invade his brain, and he loses himself in them for a moment before it strikes him that these fantasies are not so very far-fetched anymore and that making them real is a definite possibility. Somehow, this doesn't make him happy or even excited, it makes him nervous and worried instead, because he knows instinctively that she's not ready to go down that road with him yet, and the anxiety grows because when these moments come along, the moments like the one in the kitchen, they take him over and it becomes difficult to control himself, and he suddenly understands what a huge test of will this night is going to be. Maybe that's it, he thinks bitterly, maybe this is that impending disaster he was looking for, and he mentally kicks himself for trying so hard to find it, but at the same time, it's a sweet kind of torture and he's eternally grateful for the chance to go through it at all.

His hair doesn't drip anymore so he gets up, pulls his t-shirt on and wonders back towards the house. He climbs to the porch and finds her immediately, asleep in the hammock, with the moleskine open on her chest. Her hair is wet but the towel is gone, and the coffee mug sits on the porch railing, forgotten. The scene is so sweet that he leans against the railing and just watches her, and suddenly there's so much love for her inside him that he thinks his heart might explode, and it's completely incomprehensive how he was ever able to be without her, and completely unbelievable he ever left her. The feeling is so strong that it physically shakes him and brings tears to his eyes, and he needs a moment to take a breath and calm down, and when he finally gets a grip over himself, all he can do is slide down to the floor and continue to look at her, mesmerized by the fact that she's here and that on some small level, she belongs to him.

He doesn't know how long he sits there; at some point, he just becomes aware of the fact that his back hurts and that his foot is asleep, so he gets up slowly and goes inside. Once he enters the house, he realizes it's dark inside and he looks out of the window and over the lake and he can see the sun has reached the tree tops and is getting ready to disappear behind them, and he wonders regretfully why this glorious day had to go by so very quickly. He briefly thinks if he should wake Rory up, but ultimately decides against it – she probably got very little or no sleep last night, considering she managed to go through the entire notebook, so he just takes a blanket from the bed, carries it outside and throws it over her. He returns inside and lights the lamp, then finds his book and settles on the bed, happily losing himself within the pages. A few chapters fly by quickly, and when he looks up, it's dark outside and he suddenly feels hungry, so he gets up and goes in search for dinner ideas. There's milk, and eggs, and flour and pancakes come to mind, and when he finds a jar of blueberry jam in the back of the cupboard, he decides it's an obvious choice and within thirty minutes, he produces a stack of twenty and sets them on the table. He wonders again whether to wake her up; she loves pancakes and they're best when eaten warm, so he goes outside and rocks the hammock gently. She stirs and he smiles, then bends over her and kisses her gently.

"I've made pancakes," he whispers against her lips.

"I love you," she says with a smile, stretching, her eyes still closed.

He knows it's not that kind of I-love-you, but it thrills him all the same to hear the words and his heart skips a beat as her eyes open and he smiles at her. "So I guess I'll take that to mean you want the pancakes."

"Yes, very much so," she nods and untangles herself from the blanket. Jess grabs it and helps her out of the hammock, and when she stands up, she looks around and her mouth drops open.

"It's night," she says somewhat stupidly and rubs her eyes. "How long did I sleep?"

"A while," he says and throws his arm around her, directing her toward the door.

"You should have woken me up," she yawns.

He grins and kisses the side of her head. "Why?"

She shrugs. "I don't know… I just feel like sleeping is such a waste of time right now," she smiles.

He laughs out loud. "Hey, feel free to make it up to me once we're done with the pancakes," he says and opens the door.

"Oh my God, this smells awesome," she says and zeroes in on the table. "I'm warning you, what you are about to witness will not be very lady-like," she says with a smile as she starts piling the pancakes on her plate.

He grins and straddles the chair across from her. "I know, I've seen you eat before."

She lets this slide and takes a mouthful of pancakes, and conversation stops because they're both busy chewing, and within minutes, the stack disappears along with the jar of jam, but Jess can't help a burst of laughter as he watches her roll the final pancake, stick her fork into it and then push the fork into the jar and clean off the remaining jam with it before she packs the whole thing into her mouth.

"Wow, you really love those things," he chokes out between bites and laughs again after swallowing. "I think your grandmother would have a seizure if she could see you right now."

She blushes furiously, but shakes it off quickly. "I think that my table manners would be the last thing she would seize over if she could see me right now."

He laughs again and shrugs his shoulders. "Touche."

She reclines into her chair and takes a deep breath as she looks at the dishes. "I so don't want to clean this up now," she whines and closes her eyes.

"I thought you said you were done with the dishes scene anyway," he smirks and leans his head on his hands.

"That was the dish washing," she smiles. "I was still willing to dump them in the sink."

He laughs and stretches his hands before he gets up slowly. "Well, I'm not doing them right now either," he says with a smile as he walks over to the bed where he sits down, then drops on his back.

"That looks so good," she says from her chair. "I think I'm jealous."

He laughs and taps the empty space next to him. "There's plenty of room, be my guest."

"I so want to, but I don't think I can get up right now," she whines regretfully.

He closes his eyes and smiles. "You'll end up here eventually anyway, it's just the matter of whether you do it now or after your bottom falls asleep in that chair. I've had that happen to me last night, and trust me, even if it doesn't seem like it now, that chair is a torture device."

She moans incoherently but he can hear the chair creek and a moment later, he feels her collapse on the bed next to him.

"Oh, this is heaven," she says breathlessly and he laughs and opens his eyes, turning his head sideways to look at her. Her eyes are closed, her hands outstretched over her head and there's a small smile on her face, and he thinks she's beautiful, more beautiful right now in this moment than ever before. He rolls on his side and leans his head against his hand and just looks at her for a while before his voice returns.

"Yeah, it is heaven," he says softly and finds a strand of her hair, wrapping it around his fingers. She registers the change in his tone and looks at him, and there's the same change in his eyes, the laughter has gone and they are somehow darker now, but they reflect a myriad of feelings that she recognizes as her own, and it feels like she's looking into a mirror and seeing all of herself inside. The gaze continues, and suddenly she feels she's going to drown in all those feelings if she doesn't release them somehow, so she reaches for him in a rush and pulls his head down swiftly; when their lips come together, it surprises her that she can make the kiss so gentle and light, so smooth and subdued, and so very delicate. It lasts for a moment, this touch that feels like the lightest breeze, it lasts for as long as he hovers over her and only their lips touch, but when his hand comes down and wraps around her, bringing their bodies together, the breeze becomes a rush of wind and the need for more develops quickly. In a second, there's fire inside, fire that originates from his touch and it spreads over her skin quickly, and it feels like she's never really been touched before and somehow it becomes the most important thing in the world to be touched like this and she pulls on him harder until he comes down on top of her and she can really wrap her arms around him and feel him everywhere. He feels heavy but this weight feels wonderful, and when his lips come down her face and his breath grazes her ear, her hands develop a mind of their own and move under his shirt, pushing it up, running crazy traces over his back up to his shoulders where she can feel the muscles shift as he moves over her. She can feel him stall for a second, and it's like that moment of silence before the storm when everything stills, but in the next moment, the storm breaks out with a fury when his lips crash into hers and his hands begin a dance that invokes feelings she had no idea even existed.

Jess feels that crucial moment when he's still in touch with his brain come and go, and all reason and logic just vanish with it, and they're impossible to hold on to when she feels so warm and alive under him, when she clings to him so hard and when her hands set his skin aflame with every little touch. Suddenly nothing matters except here and now, and this intense craving to feel more of her, and his hand moves past the cardigan and up her side and suddenly, there's skin, and it's soft and smooth and warm, and a fleeting thought registers, a thought that she's so very small that when he opens his palm, it covers the entire width of her back. With his shirt pushed up and hers so tiny, suddenly it's skin to skin and the contact rids him of all conscious thought and there's just chaos of hands and heartbeats and breaths, until the moment she moves and brings her leg up and he sinks further into her, and it feels much too good, it feels so good it freaks him out and he breaks away from her with a jerk and sits up abruptly, shaken and out of breath, struggling to get a grip over himself. His brain kicks in a second later and he knows this is a very bad thing, that he jumped away from her like this, a thought that is confirmed when he turns around to look at her and finds her sitting with her hands wrapped around her knees, flushed and frowning, with a distant and subdued look in her eyes.

"Rory…"

She cuts him off immediately, and she sounds hurt and frustrated. "Am I doing something wrong?"

The question is so unexpected he just looks at her blankly. "What?"

"Am I doing something wrong?" she asks again, frowning slightly.

"Something wrong?" he repeats weakly, perfectly aware he sounds like a retard but he has no idea what she's talking about. "When? Where?"

"Here, just now!" she snaps at him. "Whenever we kiss, actually."

"No!" he answers quickly, shaking his head vigorously. "God, why would you even think that?"

"Why?" she repeats incredulously. "Why? Because you always do this, Jess, you always… pull away from me, and just now, it felt like you would have actually run away screaming if there was any place to go!"

She has it all backwards and he suddenly understands this, but although she's clearly angry, what really gets to him is how confused and sad she looks, and how she goes to look for fault in herself first, and he feels he should punch himself in the face for making her feel like that. He takes a deep breath and scoots closer to her, reaching for her hand, and although somewhat unwillingly, she lets him have it and he runs his thumb over her palm gently.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly. "I'm sorry for making you feel like that. You're not doing anything wrong. You're perfect," he smiles gently.

She wants to believe him, but she still looks skeptical. "Then I don't understand," she says quietly and looks at him, confused.

"It's not so easy to explain," he says, squirming slightly.

She frowns and her eyes narrow. "I strongly suggest that you try anyway," she says calmly and looks at him firmly.

"No, I was going to," he nods and takes a deep breath before he looks at her. "There's nothing wrong with you. You really are perfect, you're so perfect that you drive me insane every time you kiss me, every time you touch me, and when you touch me like you did right now, and even more than that, when you let me touch you like I just did, I just lose my mind completely, I can't think, and I have to think, because I'm worried that if I stop thinking, I will start doing things that maybe you don't want me to do, things that will scare you, things you're not ready for." He clears his throat and looks at her hand. "I don't want to mess this up again, Rory."

The words are beyond sweet and they make her thaw immediately, and she understands how precious she is to him, but he's thinking too much and she wants to laugh when she realizes this because it is usually her that does this, she's the one with the tendency to over-think and over-analyze, not him. She smiles to herself and scoots closer until she's sitting next to him, and she lays his head on his shoulder.

"Okay, so basically, this jumping away that you do is sort of a… pre-emptive strike thing that happens when you think you've gone too far?" she asks quietly, smiling slightly.

He nods, smiling. "Pretty much, yeah."

She frowns slightly. "But I don't remember seeing you do this before."

"Before when?"

She shrugs. "Before me."

He shakes his head. "I'm lost."

She frowns and takes a breath. "I don't remember you acting that way before … with Shane, for instance. You didn't have a problem with having your hands all over her in the middle of the town square, in broad daylight. Actually, I remember quite the opposite being true," she says determinedly, even though she blushes when the words come out.

He looks at her, completely stupefied. "Shane? You're comparing this to the way I was with Shane? Are you completely out of your mind? You can't compare that!"

"Why?" she asks, confused by the sudden force in his tone.

He pulls away from her and looks her square in the eye. "Are you kidding me?"

"Why is that so ridiculous?" she asks again, frowning.

He jumps up and walks around. "Because, you can't compare that, it's just different!"

"Different why?" she asks, wondering why he's suddenly so very agitated and what all the pacing around is for.

"Because I didn't love Shane, Rory!" he yells across the room, and stops in mid-step when he realizes he just yelled at her, and what exactly it was that he yelled, and he looks at his feet, not quite believing it's out there.

The words hang in the air for a moment before a smile breaks on her face and she walks over slowly and stands in front of him.

"You love me?" she asks gently.

He pushes his hands into his pockets and takes a breath before he looks at her. "I love you," he says simply. "This isn't really the way I wanted to tell you that, but the fact I screamed the words ultimately doesn't make them any less true."

She smiles the most beautiful smile and a thousand stars seem to sparkle in her eyes as she steps closer and wraps her hands around his waist.

"I just have to stand here like this and barely touch you, and my heart beats so loud that I can hardly hear myself think, and I'm out of breath, and my hands are sweating and tingles run all over me, and I love all of it, Jess. I love that you make these things happen, and I love all those things that happened earlier, on that bed, and basically, every feeling that you invoke, I love, and none of them scare me at all." She steps closer and smiles brighter. "Remember when we talked about this before, and you told me that it would be my call to make if we ever get to it? Well, if that's true, then you should give me the chance to make that call, either way, instead of making it for me."

He looks slightly shocked and processing what she just said is a bit of a challenge, but the more he thinks about it, the more he likes this new perspective, and after a while, he manages a smile and his hands come out of his pockets and close around her.

"You're sure about this? You just told me that I can do whatever I want until the moment you tell me to stop," he smirks.

She laughs. "I realize that and yes, I'm sure," she says smugly. "And I think that is the only way to go about this because with your track record of jumping away, I doubt we would ever really get anywhere."

"Fine, be that way, it looks easy now, but we'll just see how well you do under pressure," he chuckles and plants a small kiss on her lips.

"Yes, we will," she smiles back and hugs him closer.

"So, what happens now?" he asks softly.

She steps away from him and pulls him by the hand, walking over to the bed. "Now, we go to bed and sleep, hopefully." She turns off the lamp, crawls under the blanket and smiles. "I'm tired."

He climbs in after her. "Okay, and what happens tomorrow?"

She looks up at the ceiling and sighs. "Tomorrow, we go home, I guess, before either mom's or Luke's patience grows thin and they really do come barging in here with guns blazing."

There's a distinct, bitter feeling of regret and it develops within him quickly, but he knows she's right and he shrugs it off. She rolls on her side and he settles against her back and wraps his arm around her, and the sweet feeling of how perfectly they fit together returns.

"And the day after tomorrow?" he asks quietly.

She laughs softly and tangles her fingers with his. "The day after tomorrow, and all days after that one, we see each other every day, and talk about books and movies and music and a million other things that I can't remember right now, and kiss, and hopefully, laugh a lot."

He smiles into her hair and snuggles closer to her. "I can live with that," he whispers and kisses the top of her head.

"Good, I'm glad to hear it," she says quietly before she fights a yawn. He smiles into her hair again and decides to stop talking now, and just enjoys the warmth and the nearness of her. It feels wonderful to hold her like this, so relaxed and so comfortable, and so perfect against him. The complete absence of any tension surprises him and he wonders where it's gone to, but in that moment that comes before dreams he realizes it's because there's all the time in the world ahead of them, and for now, this is perfect.

"Jess," her voice comes in a whisper in that last moment of conscious thought.

"I thought we were sleeping," he murmurs in her ear.

"We are," she says quietly. "But I need to tell you something."

"I'm listening," he says into her hair.

There's a silence that stretches and he begins to think maybe he's dreaming already and she never said anything at all, but then she squeezes his hand tighter and he can hear her take a breath.

"The things inside that moleskine," she begins gently and instantly feels him tense up. "Those things that you were running from, that you feel you're responsible for," she says in a hushed voice, "none of them are your fault."

She can feel him freeze and a moment later, she senses he's fighting an urge to pull away, and she holds on to him tighter. "I know you can't understand that now," she continues softly, "I know you don't want to hear it because you're so sure you could have or should have stopped them from happening, but I wanted to tell you, for what it's worth, I don't think you could have. It's a great, big thing that you want to take responsibility for it all, but it's not yours to take." She takes a breath and kisses his hand. "And until the moment when you're able to understand that, maybe you could just trust me on this."

He says nothing, and she waits patiently, alert and careful of every breath; the silence continues and he still doesn't speak, but she soon realizes he doesn't really have to when she feels him relax against her slowly. She can sense a change in energy that surrounds them and the air somehow feels lighter and she breathes again and smiles into the darkness, deciding that this is more than enough for now, this silent acceptance, and she doesn't need him to agree or promise anything. Her heart slowly returns to its normal rhythm, and there's just one more thing she wants to say before she falls asleep, just one more thing that she should have said before but somehow, she didn't.

He can feel her turn around and soon her face is just a breath away from his, and he just stares at her for a moment before she smiles.

"There's one more thing," she whispers softly.

He smirks. "You just can't sleep, can you?"

"I never said it back," she says softly.

"Said what?" he asks quietly.

She smiles at him. "That I love you."

The moonlight dances over her face and the truth of what she just said reflects in her eyes, and for the first time, he dares to believe it, and when she snuggles close to him and holds him tight, he suddenly knows he's home. The whole world feels right in that moment, he knows this is how it was meant to be and he knows that moment is here to stay.

* * *

_A/N: _

_All writers love reviews, good or bad. They are precious insights into our reader's minds. They usually make us try harder. They often make us get better at what we do. They always motivate us to keep going. They show us what we've done well, what we've done badly and what we could have done differently. Ultimately, they make us happy._  
_Just something to think about :)_


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